A quietly crushing yet devastatingly tender work scintillating with insight and emotional intelligence. With acuity and empathy Hanna Jameson presents her readers with a captivating narrative chronicling four people’s attempts at happiness despite a looming health crisis: more and more people are literally sitting down and seemingly giving up on life. Jameson presents us with a painfully realistic portrayal of depression: not only the many ways in which it manifests in the person affected but on its eventual effects on the people who love them; rather than indicting Yun, Jameson makes us feel for him. We eventually may grow saddened by his inability and unwillingness to accept other people’s help and the way he weaponizes his own hurt and disappointment. Despite the melancholic tone permeating much of this novel, there are so many moments and scenes that will fill readers’ hearts with hope and love. I was 100% invested in Andrew and Fin’s relationship, and seeing them be vulnerable with one another really pulled at my heartstrings. Andrew and Yun’s relationship also gave me all sorts of feelings, and I found myself filled with sorrow on their behalf. A hard book to categorise and, to some extent, also a hard book to read. We’re introduced to four people attending a wedding in New York: Yun a musician and DJ, Andrew an associate professor, Emory an aspiring news reporter and Fin – the youngest at just twenty years old – a ballet student. At some point during the celebrations a girl making her way to the bar suddenly sits on the floor. She doesn’t get up, she’s uncommunicative and all efforts to lift her are met with a snarling, snapping response. In the following weeks a number of similar cases come to light. Nobody is sure if this, seemingly irreversible, behaviour is caused by some kind of virus or disease, or whether it’s something else. My favourite character was Emory, but even that felt like a distant enjoyment of her role in the story. She was so much more complex and insightful, wondering if she’s responsible for the narrative and consequent public response to the mysterious illness in the story. She had a good role in the story but I wish it was explored more. Emory couldn’t imagine what it felt like to inhabit space you truly owned. Cities were hostile to anyone who couldn’t count on the split rent and utilities of partnership. Being one person was more expensive than she had been taught to anticipate.”

Hanna Jameson’s Are You Happy Now follows two overlapping and imperfect love stories, both of which begin at the same time and place as a frightening worldwide phenomenon. The novel’s four protagonists – Yun, Emory, Andrew, and Fin – are present at a New York City wedding when one of the guests collapses without explanation. She is alive but unresponsive, appearing to have suddenly just ‘given up’ on living. Soon this mysterious ‘disease’ begins to spread, and we follow Jameson’s protagonists as they grapple with building new relationships whilst the world seemingly collapses around them. The premise is interesting, but this is entirely a novel which is centred around its characters. It’s a coming of age story in many ways, as much as a story about twenty and thirty somethings can be a coming of age story. The book focuses on four ‘millennials’ who are all linked to each other through new relationships. This is the generation like myself who feel pressured to be achieving everything in life. The expectations to have the best career, be settled down with a partner, have a mortgage and children and have enough money to lead a comfortable life. If you don’t achieve all this, you feel lost. That is exactly how these characters feel, trying to find the meaning to their lives as well as surviving a new health crisis. Throughout the novel, Jameson explores happiness, adulthood, loneliness, and connectedness. Her characters deal with failure, disappointment, and their own impotence, ‘smallness’, in the face of all that is going on in their world. I loved how many moments of vulnerability, kindness, and love we got. I also found myself relating very much with the many instances where characters are struggling to cope: with their own life, with their own unhappiness, and with taking accountability. Yun, Emory, Andrew, and Fin’s flaws and idiosyncrasies are what made them memorable and real. Although I am more of a Yun/Fin, Andrew had my heart. He was such a gem. His kindness, his alertness to other people's feelings, his selflessness…getting to know him was a delight. Then, what will happen when Cassidy is forced to return home after disaster strikes? What will she face?The main problem with his life-as-a-movie theory was that it wasn’t easy to apply to other people who weren’t the protagonists of his reality. What happened to everyone else? He couldn’t forgive them, for being human, for not getting parenthood right the first time, for not raising him better able to deal with this. That night they see something none of them can explain. Someone sits down, and simply gives up. Soon it's happening all around them. Is it an illness, or a decision?

This was a wild and intriguing sci-fi dystopian. The novel starts off with an ominous gripping line when a “boy meets girl at a wedding and the world ends”. The story follows the four main characters, the way their life changes as they witness the affect of the mysterious catatonia. Yun, an agnostic struggling musician; Emory, a self inflicting news reporter hoping to gain success; Andrew, an underpaid teacher who had never felt much; and Fin, a young ballet dancer fighting against the world. The lives of these characters become intertwined with each other as they watch the harsh reality of NYC. Relationships are created, tested and some are distorted as “love not properly expressed mutated into something jagged”. REALLY? the fighting the bear story? Now I'm just baffled. and for him to think that ended his childhood? Maybe I don't see literary symbolism here, but that just makes no sense to me. Why does he rub his arm whenever he is stressed? And why would he rub Amy's arm? I see no corralation. And she thought, Oh shit, I really like him. Oh shit, because it was never a good time to realize you really liked someone. Realizing you really liked someone meant knowing on some level it was going to hurt. What a difficult book to categorize, rate, and review! Nothing feels straightforward with this read, including the plot, the character dynamics, and the characters themselves. I finished the read feeling thoroughly bewildered. En ‘Are you happy now’ seguimos la historia de cuatro personajes principales (junto a un buen puñado de secundarios) que se enfrentan a un mundo donde se origina una pandemia. Parece la historia típica que podría surgir de estos últimos años. La pandemia consiste en personas que de un momento para otro se sientan y no hacen nada hasta que pasadas un par de semanas mueren.He wondered if a love not properly expressed mutated into something jagged and unwieldy like metal, something that could kill you.” Jameson utiliza esta pandemia como reflexión de la vida de estrés y las presiones que todos ponemos a otros y a nosotros mismos por tener que hacer ciertas cosas vitales como parte fundamental de nuestra vida. I found that each chapter in this book was very well written, and brought it’s point home in a manner that the reader could accept, and that allowed them to take a look at themselves in a non-judgmental manner. This book acts as a mirror to who we are at the soul level. Alleys, thinks John Lincoln. At least Chicago has alleys." These are the opening lines, immediately catching you off-guard but in so doing drawing you in from the off.

Something about this book just spoke to me. I settled into the life on John Lincoln almost immediately…seeing the people, places and happenings of his world clearly. (Oddly, I kept picturing him as the character Richard Sherman from “The Seven Year Itch”. A man living through a hot summer in the city, away from his wife, with an active imagination…also a book editor for a small press….) Oh my baby girl can finally find her mate!" My mom had tears of joy in her eyes. One could easily see that I was her favorite of the three of us. In second is the oldest, my brother Jacob, followed by my older sister Briella. Mom never really liked her after she found out about all the men she has slept with. My mom was a big believer in waiting for your mate, and so was I, and secretly Jake was also. With an unknown disease, neither viral or bacterial, mass hysteria occurs when millions of people start shutting down. With no scientific reason and the government leaving them to come up with their own conclusion that "it wasn’t a virus. It was no longer a simple case of mass hysteria, it was now just a narrative, that too many people had accepted.” People are forced to carry on with their lives with the fear of the catatonia that seemed to be “something so vast it couldn’t be perceived with the eyes. It could only be felt, like an ache soul- deep.”

Retailers:

The narrative’s self-awareness adds to the story. Not only does Jameson touch upon the notion of ‘main character syndrome’ but she reflects on the concept of a narrative arc, examining stories' tendency to provide some sort of closure for their characters. Jameson resists doing this, which will inevitably annoy readers and I have to say that the what-ifs scenarios presented by the ending were the only thing that I did not love about this novel. All the characters are flawed and act out on their individual insecurities and anxieties. There were moments where I empathised with them but many times where I got quite frustrated with them too. What started out as a meet cute between Emory and Yun becomes a lot more complicated. I particularly loved the intimacy and complex dynamics between Yun and Andrew’s friendship. Fin wanted with all the wide-eyed grasping of someone who’d never had, and no matter how viciously he polished the surface everyone could see it. One thing that I especially like about this novel is the characters never fall into a stereotype; the plot, too, takes detours just when you think it might take the predictable road. As John Lennon said, Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. And it’s the other things that happen which may end up making you happy, not what you thought (or planned). I sincerely wished I’d enjoyed this more. If there was a subliminal message within, then unfortunately I didn’t receive it.

I thought the premise was potentially very interesting - basically a mental health 'epidemic' - and the central question of whether this was caused by people becoming victim to an infectious agent or simply 'giving up' on life was very brave of the author. It really is one of those reads that completely bases its entertainment level on the readers interpretation of the novel. For me, this was a searing account of mental health, pointing out the prejudice and injustices of American ideologies and systems, which are also reflected across Western Europe. Perhaps I’m too conventional with enjoying traditionally formulaic novels, with story climax’s and equilibriums, or at the very least some decent character development. Unfortunately, I felt that this book didn’t offer me any of that.It is my sixteenth birthday: where everything went wrong. The day I was finally able to find my mate. I love the epilogue – “Don’t believe what you think.” We suffer because we believe what we think … and what we think is our own perception of what is. Let go of that perception, and we see the “what is’ for what it really is. This is a novel about relationships, romantic and platonic. It’s a novel about loneliness, about illness, about fear, about unmatched expectations. It’s about art, music, society and philosophy. It’s a novel about our daily interactions, about how we interact with and care for the people around us, be they strangers or loved ones. DISCLAIMER: This book was written over the course of a year, and it has clear distinctions as to where my thoughts changed on the story line. It is a first draft so please excuse plot holes as it may not be up to par with your expectations. But please read on, I still believe it is worth your time:) Llegué a esta novela porque la anterior novela de Jameson, ‘Los últimos’, me pareció una interesante propuesta dentro del trillado género detectivesco, aunque la ejecución fuera finalmente fallida. Desgraciadamente, leyendo esta nueva obra de la autora me encuentro con una situación similar.