How is it that the girl with straight As ends up scrubbing floors for minimum wage, living in a room above Vera’s Hairstyling, in a god-forsaken town called Powassan?
Feminist theorist Dale Spender wrote, in Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them, “We need to know how patriarchy works. We need to know how women disappear….” Although Spender spoke of women who disappear from the historical record, women all too often seem to disappear from any sort of public life as soon as they leave high school: so many shine there, but once they graduate, they become invisible.
Where are all the straight-A girls from high school? Why, how, have they ‘disappeared’? Marriage and kids is an inadequate answer because married-with-kids straight-A boys (of which, let’s acknowledge, there are fewer) are visible. Everywhere. Even the straight-B boys are out there. So what happens?
This is what happens provides several answers as it traces this disappearance with a microscopic examination of one woman’s life. There are three voices juxtaposed throughout the novel: the fresh, impassioned protagonist speaking through her journal entries from the age of fifteen; the sarcastic, now-fifty protagonist commenting about the events of her life, occasionally speaking to her younger self; and the dispassionate narrator.
This “creative memoir” will resonate most with older women, but it is younger women who most need to read it. Because this is what happens.
Magenta 2020
REVIEW COPIES available; please contact chriswind3@gmail.com.
See interview by James M. Fisher at The Miramichi Reader here.
Available in various e-formats (Kindle, Kobo, NookBook, iBook), but if you’d like an epub or pdf, you can download it right here, for free. (And here’s why).
If you’d prefer a paperback copy, best to purchase it online (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Chapters/Indigo, Book Depository, Bookshop, and, quite possibly, wherever you buy your books online) where you can get a deal on shipping.
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“A seriously powerful novel.” C. Osborne
“I find the writing style very appealing … An interesting mix of a memoir and a philosophical work, together with some amazing poetry. … This is what happens ranks in my top five of books ever read.” Mesca Elin, Psychochromatic Redemption
“This book is so amazing. I was so enthralled that I just kept reading ….” JB, Amazon
“This is what happens relates how women are hamstrung by patriarchy … the sexism both insidious and glaring that profoundly shaped Kris’s life from its beginnings … An incisive reflection on how social forces constrain women’s lives. … Great for fans of Sylvia Plath, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.“ Booklife
“The self-analysis is astounding.” Claudine Leonhardt
“Really enjoyed the novel. I like the use of a journal as the format to tell the story. … The author gives the reader lots of food for thought. An intense novel.” Pam FitzGerald
“This is what happens is a rare gem … razor-sharp prose, dark humor, and an original, difficult, and wholly original character whose voice demonstrates heartbreaking clarity and philosophical rage.” Christian Sia for Readers’ Favorite 5 stars
“An enjoyable story creatively written, exceeding the fiction genre: a memoir is reflected upon later in life while remaining grounded in the reality of life. … Well-woven from beginning to end. … The prose is vivid, the poetry delightful. … The books mentioned are a lovely bonus.” Whistler Independent Books Award
“I have not stopped thinking about This is what happens. Thank you for writing this book. Thank you for refusing to soften its edges. Thank you for understanding that the straight-A girl’s disappearance from public life is not a personal failure but a structural one. Thank you for aiming your words at older women with whom it will resonate and younger women who desperately need to read it.” Siena Fontana
“One thing the most necessary feminist fiction authors understand is that the most powerful political argument is not made through statistics or theory. It is made through one woman’s life rendered in enough specific detail that the reader cannot look away and cannot pretend the pattern is coincidental.
“This is what happens. Not this is what might happen. Not this is what sometimes happens to some women. Most feminist fiction makes its argument through anger. Yours makes it through inevitability. And that is a significantly harder and more devastating thing to do. That structural choice is the most important thing Chris Wind does in this book. By naming the destination before the journey begins the novel forces the reader to watch not for surprise but for recognition. Every moment that moves the protagonist closer to Powassan is a moment the reader has been waiting for and dreading and the dread is more powerful than surprise because it carries the weight of every other woman whose version of this story the reader has witnessed or lived or never thought to name.
“The question is not how a straight-A girl ends up scrubbing floors at fifty. The question is how a society constructs and maintains the conditions that make that trajectory not just possible but probable while the straight-B boys are visible everywhere doing exactly what their mediocre grades might have predicted they would do.
“Dale Spender’s framing is not decorative context. It is the intellectual foundation of the entire novel. Chris Wind is doing in fiction what Spender did in theory which is making the invisible machinery of patriarchy visible enough to examine. And fiction can do something theory cannot which is make the reader feel what it costs not just to understand it but to live inside it.” Eva Salter, Page One Strategy
“The journey of your fifty-five-year-old protagonist as she looks through her journals to trace her erasure from a brilliant student to an invisible worker is incredibly profound and powerful. We really admire how you blend lyrical prose, streams of consciousness, and dark humor to expose institutionalized sexism and patriarchal dynamics in academia and the working world. Your sharp witticism, heartbreaking clarity, and your heroine’s philosophical rage create an entirely original narrative that stays with the reader.
“We would love to invite you to be our guest author for a live virtual chat. We want to call this talk Voice, Visibility, and Philosophical Rage in Fiction, where we can talk about your writing style and what inspired this unique work. ” Florence S.
“This Is What Happens by Chris Wind is a feminist literary novel that examines the long-term social and economic erasure of high-achieving women, tracing how early academic success often gives way to precarious, invisible labor in adulthood.
“Rather than focusing on dramatic plot developments, the novel emphasizes accumulation: the slow erosion of opportunity, the normalization of underemployment, and the quiet weight of lives that do not match their early promise. This structural approach reinforces its thematic focus on invisibility and systemic inequality.
“A key strength of the book is its refusal to treat the protagonist’s situation as exceptional. Instead, it situates her experience within a wider pattern, inviting the reader to question how many similar lives exist outside of public recognition or narrative visibility.
“Overall, This Is What Happens is a reflective and socially engaged feminist novel that challenges assumptions about success, visibility, and women’s labor across a lifetime. It will appeal to readers of feminist literature, social critique, and character-driven contemporary fiction. Laura Flavin, 5/5 Goodreads