A carefully crafted novel with intriguingly multi-faceted characters.

This brilliant novel flows smoothly and bursts with themes, ideas and stories, which under Forna’s talented guidance never threatens to feel too much. It is a novel which holds itself together with dignity, beauty and intelligence. Aminatta Forna has ambitiously taken on the theme of human nature’s need to destroy and harm; she does so very matter-of-factly, there is nothing sentimental here - this does not deduct from the sense of tragedy/pain but it emphasises the true horror of it.

Through Forna’s two main characters, Attila and Jean, we learn about their parallel lives (in the past, present and future) battling to make amends for human destructive behaviour both with wildlife as well as terrible global conflicts. The author simultaneously reveals the personal emotional world of her characters allowing us to witness (formative) scenes in their past (focusing on their relationships and their line of work) as well as the problems in society (racism, immigration laws). Forna unravels how Jean and Attila’s particular professions have contorted and shaped their ability to show/feel love and commitment.

There is also a parallel made between despotic leaders instilling fear and murdering indiscriminately and the way humans kill and remove wildlife due to unfounded fears and ignorance. However, although Forna does not hold back, she isn’t preaching but subtly and gently nudging and dislodging realisation from just below the surface of the narrative.

This is also a sprawling love story to humanity; there are a multitude of types of love here: maternity, marriage (and its implosion), grief, friendships – I found Attila and Rose’s love story particular poignant (when everything else in our memories has evaporated love remains distilled at the bottom of our souls). It is a whirlwind of a novel that ultimately feels like it is novel about healing with a focus on searching; when we are search for something else we almost always end up finding other things.

I thoroughly enjoyed the chapters whereby a multicultural team of people look for Tano. These people are the true observers of the city (and life): the security guards, the street performer, the cleaners, hotel workers, tailors who come from ravaged countries in Africa or places like Bosnia or Iraq. I found this a very moving and beautiful portrayal of the breakdown of race and religion in the city where unity and solidarity seal up the gaps (they too are like the foxes weaving their way through the city unseen and yet seeing/feeling everything). Life continues regardless, torture and destruction continues regardless.

Coincidence as a concept (its existence or not) is also an important aspect of this novel. There is an incident in Iraq upon which many of the characters are involved and Forna has brilliantly and firmly threaded this into to the novel so that everything/everyone (at least in Attila’s storyline) appears to hinge upon this event, as well as the ‘chance’ meetings between Attila and Jean.

My only criticism (if it is such) is that I’m not keen on the title of the novel, I understand Forna’s play on this word (as paradox, as a word that has lost meaning, as an emphasis on the Western vision of obsessively feeling happiness is due – and it also ironically reads like a self help book title too) but according to me, it just doesn’t seem to bear the weight or do justice to this fabulous novel – it felt too flippant.

However, all-in-all an absolute joy to read. In order to fully appreciate and absorb all the details, information, characters and aspects this novel is better still –if at all possible - upon re-reading (which you feel the immediate desire to do so once you finish reading it anyway).

This novel, ultimately, looks at London's hidden communities and the interconnectedness of our lives. The two main characters meet by strange accident, and then reconnect, again, after another unlikely encounter. There are some high concepts in this novel, but the plot jumps and the lack of deep character building, made this underwhelming for me.

I regret that I am unable to review this book as I do not have a kindle. There is no option to download the book to my iPad.

It is hard to describe the plot of this novel, but not hard to detail it's appeal. The main characters, Jean, a biologist involved in a study of urban foxes in London, and Attila, a world renowned psychiatrist who specializes in PTSD and war zones, literally bump into each other on Waterloo Bridge one night. She while pursuing her research, he, in London to present the keynote address at a conference. Their paths cross again in a day or so. Soon, they are helping each other locate the missing son of Attila's niece, an immigrant. Their efforts succeed through the help of various service workers known to Jean via her work.

But the plot sounds far fetched the more I try to describe it. The reading itself is wonderful, almost luxurious in the use of characters and language. Throughout the several days covered, we learn of Jean's prior studies and marriage, of Attila's travels throughout the world to war zones near and far as well as his grief at the death of his wife and of the loss of a dear friend to early Alzheimers. The intertwining of the stories seems remote, yet totally believable.

Highly recommend - will appeal to readers of Anne Tyler, Thomas Keneally, Celeste Ng, and fans of literary fiction which provokes thought and discussion.

With thanks to NetGalley.com, the author, Aminatta Forna, and the publisher, Atlantic Review Press, for access to the Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for this review.

I was give an advance copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

What a uniquely captivating book! The book was fascinating---just from the storylines; one about observation of wild animals living in human living areas, and about dealing with the aftermath of victims of human conflict. The subtle parallels were fascinating and insightful. One of my favorite parts of the book was when Jean tells Atilla that their meeting was not coincidence---it was the natural confluence of Harlen and Hitler---meaning that their worlds overlap due to fast food and the movement of population due to bombing in World War II.

I loved the characters and the network of friends that each develops in London. The author does not dwell on it, but the parallels between the animals that Jean studies and the survivors of War that Atilla strives to help are fighting a similar battle ---with similar survival instincts.

Ultimately, the message is that Happiness is its own definition and that it is different for each person---and finally, that what does not kill you, makes you stronger.

I loved the book and all of the characters. A lovely read.

A very large black man, aptly named Attila Asare, is a psychologist specializing in PTSD. One evening, crossing the Waterloo Bridge, he bumps in to Jean Turane. She's a wildlife biologist, specializing in the migration patterns of foxes and coyotes and wolves.

How these two got to be who and where they are, and how their lives begin to intertwine, makes for a most enjoyable read.

I read this EARC courtesy of Net Galley and Grove Atlantic. pub date 03/16/18

This was a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking novel. The characters were quite unlike any I had encountered in any other book, and addressed many issues that I had very little previous insight into. Attila's experiences in war zones were extremely well-observed and asked many uncomfortable questions of the reader. In stark contrast were the depictions of modern-day London and it's inhabitants, both human and animal. The unfolding of the relationships between the main characters was tenderly addressed and lent another element to the story.
I loved it!

Perplexing. There is a lot going on in this novel and I’m not sure how much happiness is contained within. Ms. Forna is attempting to show the interrelatedness of lives that can intersect and cause a change reaction. Attila and Jane meet in London, totally by chance, she bumps into him on a bridge, and no words are exchanged initially but they see each other later, again by chance and converse with each other, and those exchanges form the basis of this busy novel. The prose is what carried me through, because the pacing dragged in spots and the plot was thickened by side stories that didn’t necessarily add to the flow of the book.

Jean is studying Urban foxes and the story opens up with a look at coyote hunters in Massachusetts in 1834. Since, coyotes are no longer sited as a threat to society, foxes became the new nuisance in Jean’s time. I was somehow thinking that foxes would somehow be connected to some other theme in the novel to bring about a greater clarity and a cohesiveness that gets lost in all the assiduous distractions. Forna’s prose is crafty and clever enough to keep the book afloat, satiating the reader’s interest . Through Jean and Attila’s conversations we learn their backstories and personal histories, which to this reader seem to be devoid of the very title of this novel, happiness. Maybe it was subtle and perhaps I missed the marks.

“He liked to ask her questions about her day and what she had done. He liked facts, he did not like opinions and did not venture them himself, he preferred to talk about places rather than people, objects rather than ideas. Where and what and not why. He spoke about what he had seen or done, not what he had thought or felt. It was part of his nature. Opinions, people, ideas: these harbored the potential for conflict.“ It was these types of sentences that kept me reading and makes me a recommender of this novel. Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for an advanced ebook. Book will publish March, 18, 2018.

I wasn't a very big fan of this book and would prefer not to write a negative review.

This is very different from Aminatta Forna’s best known novels, set in Sierra Leone, such as the luminous ‘Ancestor Stones’. Here the setting is almost entirely the world of the migrant underclass of London, where Ghanaian expert in post-conflict post-traumatic stress disorder Attila Assare and urban wildlife biologist Jean from the wintry wilds of Massachusetts join forces to restore a young boy to his mother. In doing so, they draw on help from a myriad of security men, traffic wardens, hotel doormen…mainly from West Africa.

Challenging themes include the interconnectedness of our lives, man’s cruelty to man (which make hard reading at times), loss, the impermanence of modern life and the unexpected kindness of strangers.

I was lucky to be able to read a review copy from NetGalley. While I did not find it as engaging as some of the author’s earlier novels, a new Aminatta Forna is always worth celebrating!

‘At that time of the day Waterloo Bridge is busy with shoppers and weekend workers who make their way on foot across the bridge to Waterloo Station.’

On that day and at that time, a fox makes its way across Waterloo Bridge. Among those distracted by the sight are Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist in London to deliver a keynote speech at a conference. This chance encounter defines a starting point for a series of interactions between Jean and Attila which will take the reader on a journey through lives and places. From within the anonymity of London, our attention is drawn to these two people, and then beyond them.

Attila has two objectives in London. The first is to deliver a keynote speech on trauma, the second is to contact Ama Fremah, the daughter of friends who has not called home for a while. Attila discovers that Ama has been caught in an immigration crackdown. While Attila locates Ama quite quickly, her young son Tano is missing.

Attila runs into Jean again, by chance, while trying to find Tano. Jean mobilises the network of men she uses as volunteer fox spotters. These men, with their broader contacts among the people who work jobs on the London streets, band together to help. At the same time as the search for Tano continues, a situation involving a friend leads Attila to take on a consulting case. Jean’s life is changed by her contact with Attila and her involvement in his world. At the same time, she is caught up in a debate about urban foxes, about fears and the (oh so) human desire for control.

As the story unfolds, as both the lives of Jean and Attila become more complicated because of their interactions, both are drawn to question things that they had accepted in the past. Attila revisits the keynote speech he had prepared on trauma.

‘Attila picked up the pen again and traced his thoughts on paper.’

And then:

‘He sat back and reread the words. At the top of the paper he wrote: ‘HAPPINESS’ and underlined it with two dark strokes, and underneath he wrote the words: ‘THE PARADOX’.’

There’s so much to think about and to enjoy about this novel. I’m finding it impossible to assemble the right words to do justice to Ms Forna’s multi-layered story about belonging, about chance encounters changing lives and about assumptions of happiness. I loved the way the characters were developed. Each of the links in the novel made sense, seemed natural rather than contrived. I finished the novel content. I’m still thinking about ‘Happiness’.

Note: My thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Happiness by Aminatta Forna is a fiction novel that takes place in London 2014. It is the story of two people whose paths cross while Jean, a wildlife biologist, accidentally bumps into Attila while chasing a fox. Attila is a psychiatrist from Accra visiting London for a conference.
While I am not familiar with Forna's previous books I was definitely taken in by her captivating writing style. She has the art of making each character memorable no matter how big or small their role was in the story.
This book left me contemplating about people, friendship, and the wildlife that surrounds us. Despite each of the characters pasts, their pain and struggle for survival, the hope to get past those hardships is possible.

A lovely, multi-layered book covering so many themes and with a gentle love story at its centre. Thoroughly engaging characters make this an absorbing and entertaining read. Beautifully written.

I treasured every moment as I read this book. It felt as if I took a long trip to exotic destinations with a clever, insightful friend. Jean and Attila led the most memorable cast of characters I can remember meeting in the pages of a book. The story engaged my mind and my heart, and I believe I am a better person for having read it. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance reader's copy -- I will surely buy it for my permanent library when it is published.

I’ve not read Aminatta Forna’s earlier novel ‘The Memory of Love’, though I saw it on bookshop shelves at the time of publication and admired its cover, but I shall be seeking it out as a matter of urgency as a result of my reading this latest of hers and how interested it has made me in Sierra Leone and its recent history.

This is an educational experience on several levels, giving an insight into the habits of urban foxes, a reminder of some of brutal conflicts around the world in the last century, and a love story to boot. Two engaging main characters carry the various strands of the story to a pleasing conclusion.

Several themes had quite an impact on me. The major one is what we consider a ‘normal’ life. Through his work as a psychiatrist dealing with people who have suffered trauma during war, Attila has come to the conclusion that conflict is the natural state of humanity and that life in the generally peaceful present-day Western world is the abnormal state and has produced an unusual society.

‘War is in the blood of humans. The kind of people who torture and rape during war, they’re always among us, every time you walk down a busy street you’re passing killers waiting to kill. War gives them licence. We tell ourselves people are ordinarily good, but where’s the proof of that? There are no ordinarily good people, just a lot of people who’ve never been offered the opportunity to be anything else.’

‘A society went numb, Attila thought as he waited for the lights to change, as often from being battered by fate than from never being touched. The untouched, who were raised under glass, who had never felt the rain or the wind, had never been caught in a storm, or run from the thunder and lightning, could not bear to be reminded of their own mortality. They lived in terror of what they could not control and in their terror they tried to control everything, to harness the wind……The glass dwellers were terrified of the cloche being lifted. They treated the suffering of others as something exceptional, something that required treatment, when what was exceptional was all this.’

‘We … have used the suffering of others to reinforce the myth of ourselves: their unhappiness becomes the bolster to our happiness…..We want to be assured that all pain is treatable, while we comfort ourselves with the belief in the superior quality of our existence for never having encountered trauma, for this to continue we must build psychological fortresses to protect ourselves against the possibility of pain. Now you see that all of the weakness is not in them, those who live through the agony, who survive and transform into something else, but in others too. Here …..’

He argues that people who have experienced or witnessed horrific things have of course suffered badly but are not necessarily damaged in the way modern Western society assumes, nor in need of the kind of anti-depressant treatment they tend to be prescribed. ‘Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.’ What they need is practical help to change their lives for the better.

An emotionally satisfying novel, sublimely well written as can be seen from the extracts above, that I’d recommend highly.

This tale of Attila, a renowned psychologist, and Jean, a biologist/scientist, totally enthralled me, not just because I am familiar with the areas of London in which much of the story takes place. The way Aminatta Forma built up not only these but all the less important characters created a depth of knowledge about their lives which made me long for the happy ending which in my heart I knew would not come for all of them. Whilst the subtle shifts from past to present times reminded me of what I enjoy in the work of Kate Morton.

This book is extremely detailed and descriptive of every event.
I, though, found it disconnected and rambling.
I just never could find myself involved in the storyline, except when on the hunt for the protection of the coyotes.
I had to make myself finish the book, but with lots of skimming the pages toward the end.

Thank you Net Galley for the free ARC. This book combines the search for a missing child with a woman's study of foxes in London. The two main characters meet and work together to track what happened to the child. Confusing.

Happiness by Aminatta Forna reads like a character study where even the most minor people get some in-depth background details. The two main characters, Attila and Jean, meet by coincidence and the story goes on to describe them individually as well as how they interact. "Attila was not unhappy, he was simply living with a grief that had become his quiet companion." It's a slow mover but stories of the two are interesting enough to keep the reader engaged. First part of the book has a little bit of mystery and the last half has a little romance. The writing style of going back and forth is abrupt and the change of scenes from one paragraph to the next is sometimes disconcerting. The book has many layered themes: loneliness, grief, love, death, hope, as well as coyotes, foxes, and parakeets. "Everything happens for a reason, that was Jean's view, and part of her job was tracing those chains of cause and effect, mapping the interconnectedness of things." There are many dramatic events (missing child, animal murder, death of a friend) yet they are handled in such a quiet way that they too seem to become just another emotion to add to the character study. "'Trauma does not equal destiny.'...the emotional vulnerability of trauma is oftentimes transformed into emotional strength." This is an interesting novel and I recommend it.