Happy Endings-Margaret Atwood

"Even the happiest stories, if you follow them far enough, end unhappily."
"...It all depends on when you stop following the story."
-dialogue between friends recently

Is this story simply a story, or does Atwood challenge us the readers when she says that the plot is easy "just one thing after another, a what, and a what, and a what...Now try How and Why." Atwood tells us that the plot is generally the boring part-it's not so much what happens as it is the human motivations that make a story interesting.
Stories don't end happily, we the characters make them happy-the very fact that the story ends ends the happy aspect of the story-so there cannot be any happy endings.