‘Bowler interrogates the idea of a meaningful life, not just for ourselves but for others, too. I value her work so much’ PANDORA SYKES
'A delight from start to finish, Joyful, Anyway embodies the mix of pleasure and aching that makes us human' KATHERINE MAY, AUTHOR OF WINTERING
'Joyful, Anyway is colourful and layered, unafraid of the occasional gut-punch of raw feeling and vulnerability – much like Kate Bowler herself' JERRY SEINFELD
'A deeply moving everyday masterpiece. I loved it' ELIZABETH GILBERT, AUTHOR OF EAT, PRAY, LOVE

You can't always be happy, but you can be joyful, anyway.

After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. Alive. Blessed. But she still ached – for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day. So she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a five-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere.

In Joyful, Anyway, Bowler takes us on a hilarious and tender journey through big questions and small delights. With wry wit and deep honesty, she explores how joy can surprise us even in the middle of pain, boredom and longing.

This is not a book about fixing your life. It is about how we can all find more and feel more, by making room for small extraordinary moments. For anyone who has ever felt stuck, who is aching for meaning, who feels undone by loss, who feels that joy is just out of reach, who wants, simply, to have more fun, Joyful, Anyway is a delicious, insightful tour through the questions that sit in the deepest part of our souls. It proves that for every time we ask: Is this it? Joy will answer: there is more.

The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn’t choose?

Hailed by Glennon Doyle as ‘the Christian Joan Didion’, Kate Bowler used to accept the modern idea that life is an endless horizon of possibilities, a series of choices which if made correctly, would lead us to a place just out of our reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. But then at thirty-five she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, and now she has to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives when the life we hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?

In No Cure for Being Human, Kate searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of our modern ‘best life now’ advice industry, which offers us exhausting positivity, trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn and out-perform our humanness. With dry wit and unflinching honesty she grapples with her cancer diagnosis, her ambition and her faith and searches for some kind of peace with her limitations in a culture that says that anything is possible.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate’s irreverent, hard-won observations in No Cure For Being Human chart a bold path towards learning new ways to live.