Why Not?: Fifteen Reasons to Live

Featured on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE $60,000 HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION

Longlisted for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

Clear-eyed … Robertson is no stranger to confronting unsavoury truths. -Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag

Many of us sense that the world has too many moving parts and can become utterly defeated. Ray Robertson found a ‘road back’ in this splendid and intriguing book.
Jim Harrison

Shortly after completing his sixth novel, Ray Robertson suffered a depression of suicidal intensity. Soon after his recover, he decided to try and answer two of the biggest questions we can ask. What makes humans happy? And what makes a life worth living?

His answers aren’t what you might expect from a mental illness memoir but they’re exactly what you’d expect from Ray Robertson. With the vitality of Nick Hornby and a brashness all his own, Robertson runs his hands over life, death, intoxication, and art. Unashamedly working-class and unabashedly literary, Why Not? is a rolling, rocking, anti-Sisyphean odyssey.

Ray Robertson is the celebrated author of eight books and six novels, including What Happened Later, about Jack Kerouac’s last years. He lives and writes in Toronto, Ontario.