It was the cover of Marissa Higgins’ debut novel A Good Happy Girl that initially caught my eye: a young woman in profile, mouth open so wide her jaw nearly distends as she devours a burger. It speaks to the unbridled need in its pages, and I knew, right away, I had to read it.
Higgins’ protagonist, Helen, is a self-destructive, tender-hearted attorney who guards the truth. Barely keeping her head above swirls of shame and cough syrup, she embarks on a relationship with a married lesbian couple, Catherine and Katrina. The two women vex and validate Helen’s experiences as she grapples with familial trauma—both recent and long-buried. Higgins masterfully oscillates between poignancy and the grotesque as she examines the many dimensions of both care and neglect.
Higgins took our call from Puerto Rico where tropical birds sang in the background, punctuating our conversation about sex, grief, and libraries.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Elizabeth Endicott
Where did the idea for A Good Happy Girl first come from?
Marissa Higgins
Early in 2020, I had done a creative nonfiction workshop. It was the last in-person thing I did before COVID, really. After that, I was more into the writers’ space online and I saw a fiction class on style being taught by Garth Greenwell online and I got into it somehow. The short story I wrote for that was the original Helen, Katrina, and Catherine—this scene where Helen is eating macaroni and cheese before filming her feet at work. It was not well received, honestly, but within a few months I was writing it into longer fiction.
Elizabeth Endicott
From piss to pus, you write with such refreshing frankness about the corporeal experience. Can you explain your approach when it comes to writing about bodies?
Marissa Higgins
I try to write with all the senses in mind, especially ones I don’t see as much on the page, like smell, and I feel like sound doesn’t come up much within bodies. But honestly, I think when it comes to any writing for me, I’m so motivated by the line and the music of it that no matter the topic, I really work on the line level and just kind of see how it comes together later. I tend to write a lot quickly at once and just stay in the same voice and rhythm.
Elizabeth Endicott
Grief is at the forefront of this book, and what feels so fresh about your take is how you explore grief by intersecting it with desire. Erotic scenes often give way to catharsis. Can you speak to using sex as an emotional catalyst while tackling this heavy, sometimes stagnant emotion?
Marissa Higgins
Oh, this is so interesting. I like that idea. It’s so funny that you say the sex in the book is a catalyst for emotion because I actually got a Kirkus review recently that describes the sex as passionless. I wrote the sex scenes after I had an agent, actually, and she really encouraged me to write sex on the page. I think it was in part to dig deeper, to get more vulnerable and more weird between Helen and the women. I personally thought of the sex as a way of relieving tension in the text, like a way of having Helen be handled. It was a way of trading off power between her and the wives in the narrative, but I love how you described it—it’s a really smart reading.
Elizabeth Endicott
I, myself, am highly skilled at compartmentalizing, so I was impressed by the way you captured moments of Helen repressing and deflecting while still maintaining so much emotionality. Tell me about your process illuminating the tenderness behind a rather avoidant protagonist.
Marissa Higgins
I think Helen’s grandma—those scenes with her and that doll, especially—have that tender feeling. It probably doesn’t come through to others necessarily, but I feel like Helen and her grandma are some of the scenes and chapters in the book that are most vulnerable to Helen. And I think they are some of the scenes that are most important to me. They didn’t change all too much from the beginning. I’ve seen Helen described in reviews as really relatable for people who have any kind of avoidant attachment style, or a personality disorder.
Elizabeth Endicott
Helen has a deep hunger for attention, but can also be neglectful of both herself and others, a pattern demonstrated by her parents. What are your thoughts on the traits we inherit, and breaking cycles?
Marissa Higgins
For me, Helen is someone who doesn’t really have a “before” from [her] trauma—there´s not really a time in her childhood (that she can remember) where things were actually good and safe and healthy. She was probably one of those babies who stopped crying because they were ignored so many times. I think it’s a really interesting thought experiment, if Helen’s behavior is the result of nature or nurture or both. Helen is an adult who doesn’t trust herself, who hardly believes in her own value, and while she breaks some cycles—going to college, having a career, living independently, etc—she doesn’t love or even think about herself enough to feel she’s worthy of having clean teeth. Probably the biggest way Helen is breaking a cycle is by not having children of her own.
Elizabeth Endicott
Which of your characters from A Good Happy Girl would you most/least like to encounter on a dating app?
Marissa Higgins
I am a really curious (nosy) person so I would be riveted by the dating profile of any/all characters because I love to see how people talk about themselves and what we communicate about ourselves online. I think matching with Helen would just about end me, as I can’t imagine being so close to someone who is essentially a version of myself would lead anywhere particularly peaceful. I think seeing Helen’s parents, their best first impressions online, would be compelling and bittersweet. I think no one wants a life like Helen’s parents, but their humanity is real, too. What would they list as their favorite music? Their ideal Friday night?
Elizabeth Endicott
You wrote a piece for The Huffington Post about libraries being your safe space growing up as a gay kid amid homophobia. How do you think it will feel to see A Good Happy Girl at your own local library?
Marissa Higgins
I’m so excited. I found some copies on hold at libraries across the country that show up for their “most anticipated” or “coming soon” titles, and it’s surreal, it feels like the biggest honor ever. I’m probably more excited about my book being in the libraries than anywhere else. Libraries or anywhere super accessible like a Walmart or something, to me, that’s where I’m like, “Yes!”
Elizabeth Endicott
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Marissa Higgins
Unfortunately, I didn’t want to hear it at the time. But when I started writing, when I was getting into journalism in my twenties (I just turned 34), I was writing essays as a way to get bylines. The advice was to not write seriously about your life before you’re thirty. And I definitely rejected that. Since I ended up writing novels, I feel like I could have saved myself so much grief and anxiety and stress if I had just allowed myself to write fiction then and not been so driven on writing something that would get me a job, or that would make me more appealing to an agent. But at the time I wasn’t writing fiction, hardly at all. Looking back, wow, nonfiction is not for the faint of heart.
Elizabeth Endicott
Congratulations on the sale of your next novel Sweetener, which sounds excellent. How is the writing process for that compared to your experience with A Good Happy Girl?
Marissa Higgins
I actually have a revision of Sweetener due to my editor on Monday. So it’s not quite done yet, which feels kind of crazy and so different. For A Good Happy Girl, I reread the book with my agent over and over and over and then when I went on submission, I got no offers but a revise and resubmit from Catapult, who eventually bought it. But I still had many more edits. It was a pretty long lead time. So it felt like a lot of rewriting and then a lot of silence.
With Sweetener, it just feels totally different. We submitted it to my editor who got a first look, and they offered right away which totally shocked me. We’re going over ideas for the cover and stuff now, it feels like it’s still not real. With the first book, things moved really slowly and there was a lot of, “No,” like repeatedly, and a lot of thinking that it might not happen. With the second book, I haven’t heard all that much “No” about it yet. Helen was a hard-won battle.
FICTION
A Good Happy Girl
Marissa Higgins
Catapult
Published April 2, 2024
