"A nervy and blisteringly funny new novel."
--The Wall Street Journal "Reading the novel is akin to spending time with a witty if merciless observer of other people's idiocies. There's something of a latter-day Holden Caulfield about the narrator ... it possesses an enlivening, claustrophobic charge."
--The Spectator Following a young woman over the course of one outrageous and insufferable downtown dinner party at the home of her estranged best friends--an artist and curator couple, whom she now realizes stands for everything she detests--
Happiness and Love is a "deliciously scathing" (
Vogue UK) debut novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.
From her perch on the corner of a white sofa, in the beautiful apartment of terrible people, our narrator watches the assembled group of artists, writers, and hangers-on and silently, mercilessly eviscerates them in a "nervy and blisteringly funny" (
Wall Street Journal) monologue.
"Told in a single long, savage and hilarious paragraph," this is a novel that can be read "in one delicious go" (
Financial Times): the story of an evening that slowly self-destructs, as the guests sip orange wine and await the arrival of a newly famous actress. When the guest of honor finally does arrive, she sets in motion a disastrous end to the evening, laying bare the depravity and decadence of the hosts' empty little lives--a hollowness that the narrator herself knows all too well.
