Happiness and Love

About the book

‘Exceptionally funny and entertaining’ Katy Hessel, author of The Story of Art Without Men

‘An ecstatic performance of heightened perception’ Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick

‘Zeitgeist and timeless, cynical but not soulless. Fabulous!’ Melissa Broder, author of Milk Fed

Years after escaping her unbearable artworld friends in New York for a new life in London, an unnamed writer finds herself back on the Lower East Side attending a dinner party hosted by Eugene and Nicole – an artist-curator couple – and attended by their pretentious circle. It’s the evening after the funeral of their mutual friend, a failed actress, and if the narrator once loved and admired Eugene and Nicole and their important friends, she now despises them all. Most of all, however, she despises herself for being lured back to this cavernous apartment, to this hollow, bourgeois social set, for a dinner party that isn’t even being thrown in their deceased friend’s honour, but in the honour of an up-and-coming actress who is by now several hours late.

As the guests sip at their drinks and await the actress’s arrival, the narrator, from her vantage point in the corner seat of a white sofa entertains herself - and us - with a silent, tender, merciless takedown.

‘Bracing and funny and fiercely clever, a first novel of extraordinary confidence and profoundly entertaining wickedness’ Orlando Whitfield, Nero-award listed author of All that Glitters