The unnamed narrator has returned from London to New York after many years away. She's unhappy to be back and desperate to stay tucked away from the acquaintances she had when she lived in New York previously. However, after learning of her friend Rebecca's death, she bumps into an old friend, Eugene, and is invited to a dinner party that will honor a famous actress. (And, of course honoring Rebecca. But only performatively).
And that is what this book highlights. The performative nature of grieving, living, existing.

As the narrator sits in a corner sofa awaiting the arrival of the very late guest of honor, she analyzing the other guests, What follows is a stream of consciousness about the pretensions of the artworld, artists, and how they value their own intellect, wealth, and achievement over the value of their art.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars. Always gonna love a book that makes me feel insane by the end of it. This was brutal, witty, and I loved it. The girly pop (she’s unnamed) is back in New York after escaping to Europe to get away from the cult art world and people who think they know everything. After returning and hearing about her estranged friend, Rebecca’s death, she is slinking around the Lower east side when she runs into Eugene, somebody from her old social set. He invites her to a dinner party where in her mind, she clearly doesn’t want to go, but the people pleaser in her says yes. This starts off the rest of the book which is basically her talking shit about everybody at that dinner and picking them apart in her head until they are nothing. At first the no paragraph breaks and no chapters got to me but you have to take it as a book about a woman literally talking shit in her head and it makes it easier. Vicious, delicious, and humorous this really was a treat. As always, thank you so much Scriber for an earc.

Happiness and Love was different than I expected. From the synopsis, I imagined this would be a more humorous story, but it didn't have that lighter, less serious tone. I don't think this is a bad thing per se, but it became a bit tiresome to be trapped in the narrator's thoughts. While I found her insights clever, they didn't grab me in the way that I hoped.

I love an unusual literary fiction novel with a unique format (stream of consciousness narration over the course of one evening in one long paragraph? Sign me up!), but in this case, I found it more tedious than enjoyable. Despite my critiques, I'd still recommend picking this one up if you want something different. It's a quick read, and after all, who hasn't spent a party being a bit too judgmental of the other attendees?

Thank you Scribner and NetGalley for an E-ARC of Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a continuous narration of a character sitting on a couch for about 60% of the story. Writing without paragragh breaks is a challenge for a writer and a reader, but I wasn't enjoying the story at all. The ending felt disconected and only felt like an excuse to make up for the title of the book.

An unnamed narrator reluctantly attends a dinner party with her former art world friends in NYC after years of avoiding them, spending the entire evening mentally eviscerating everyone present while they wait for a famous actress to arrive. Dubno's takedown of pretentious cultural elites is often brilliant and cutting - the observations about rich people who hoard art, shallow conceptual artists, and failed experimental novelists are genuinely entertaining. But 200+ pages of unrelenting internal critique, written in one continuous stream without paragraph breaks, becomes exhausting even when you agree with most of the narrator's assessments. I found myself simultaneously entertained by the razor-sharp commentary and worn down by the sheer relentlessness of it all - like being trapped at the very dinner party the book is skewering.

This was an interesting and a challenging one.

Please go into this knowing the whole book is one chapter / one paragraph.

Being a New Yorker myself I felt familiar with a lot of the characters and the grievances the narrator had with them. I’m also a fairly cynical person so the idea of someone sitting on a couch at a house party (really a dinner that seems to never be ready - an internal and less humorous version of the Dinner Party episode of The Office) and mentally shredding everyone felt relatable to me.

Ultimately the style of writing just made this one so tough for me and I wanted it to work.

This was very dark and anxiety inducing!! I enjoyed it but it was not an easy read. I liked the complexity of the characters and I always enjoy a story that takes place over the course of one evening!

The cover had me thinking this would be a somewhat humorous criticism of a societal get together of sorts. Or just some thoughts?

I’ve never read a book that presents as one large paragraph. I crave separation with paragraphs. At first I thought my book was not formatted properly but I was reading through the app and others have stated it reads like a diary stream of consciousness. I’m okay with a stream of conscious point of view but one long paragraph was a new experience for me and I personally was not a fan.

This book and I just didn’t connect, but it might be your next favorite read!

Thank you for allowing me to read this ARC. I appreciate the opportunity to leave honest feedback voluntarily. I DNF’d this one around 25% and saw the remaining pages were all one paragraph and knew this was not going to be my favorite book. If you love books that read like a stream of conscious, I think you’ll love this one.

This incredibly sharp book has its tender parts as well - told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, you are immediately drawn into her life and the art world in a unique and cutting way.

I fear it is not comfortable or pleasant to live so thoroughly inside a person's head. This book reads like a minimally edited long form diary entry, taking place over the course of a single night. I'm usually a fan of fail girl protagonists but found the unnamed narrator's brutal lack of self-awareness grating. I can celebrate this book for its bold narrative choices and scathing critique of the upper class but less so for its abstract structure and tedious run-on sentences .

This will be a very divisive novel for sure but I had a blast with this one. I love lit-fic and this checked off everything that I love about this genre.

Our narrator has returned to town for her former best friend's funeral and the novel takes place over the course of a dinner party that she's attending hosted by Eugene and Nicole. She begins to reflect on every single person in the room and comes to the realization that, yeah, she really does hate everyone here.

This was everything that I look for in a "weird girl lit-fic" book. I thought that the writing and dialogue was clever and sharp. Our narrator is a delight to read. Her inner dialogue is hilarious and brutal. The plot itself is very intense and the author does an amazing job with ramping up the awkwardness and the tension engulfing the room--ultimately cumulating in a well-executed final scene.

I would highly recommend this one. It was an absolute delight to read and I definitely see myself re-reading it in the future.

unfortunately didn't enjoy this one and eventually DNF'd around the 40% mark. didn't connect with the characters and found them pretentious, also wasn't crazy about the writing style, even though I typically like stream of consciousness type stuff. maybe it was that I just wasn't connecting to the story at all. unfortunately a miss for me.

This was well written and although the main character felt a little underdeveloped, The strong plot upheld the book as a whole.

Unfortunately, this story just didn’t work for me. It came across as very pretentious, and there were no likable characters. It was a quick read, but I definitely can’t recommend it.

Such a huge disappointment. Happiness and Love was on my highly anticipated reads of this year. The synopsis sounded so interesting and intense. Unfortunately, I had an impossible time getting into the prose. The writing style was so dense and disjointed. The long, rambling paragraphs turned me off, and the lack of quotation marks really aggravated me. This whole novel felt like a manifesto and therapy session. When the exciting moments did happen, it didn’t rock my world. I wanted to love this book so much, but it was an utter failure and it hurts to say that. This book had potential to be something great and profound but ultimately left me feeling frustrated.

I imagine many people won’t enjoy this novel - none of the characters, including the protagonist, are likeable. The prose is frenetic, venomous, and excoriating.

That being said, it’s worth the read if you love literature and art, and if you think the rich should be taxed much more. Happiness and Love is well written, and successfully executed. The ruminating form captures the malcontent of our current age - it’s an accessible critique of the art world, consumerism, capitalism, and quasi-intellectualism.

Read this is you’ve ever found yourself sitting in the corner of a party, drinking too much wine and judging everyone around you (including yourself).

I couldn’t finish this one. It was rather like the literary equivalent of acid indigestion. So much bile. I know, that was the point in this takedown of New York pretentiousness but the snarkyness was just overwhelming. Some may enjoy its spite, and there’s undeniable wit and detail on display, but the tone is unrelenting. No thanks.

2.5⭐️
I was not a fan of the lack of chapters and paragraphs on this since it made it hard to find a good stopping point.

This was just a continuous rant and maybe would’ve worked better as an essay.

Inspired by Woodcutter by Thomas Bernhard, Happiness and Love is about a women who is roped into a dinner party with her former friends from the NYC art scene she abandoned five years before, blissfully unaware she is doing the same things she’s criticizing the pretentious dinner party guests for. While the entirety of this book takes place at the dinner party, this book is more in the mind of our main character as she reflects on her, and her former friends’ bad behaviors in the past, and grief. The writing is a bit repetitive, but in a way that felt purposeful (but saying Bowery 10 times in the first two pages was a bit much). I really enjoyed this, and can see it really being a hit for people who like lit fic about insufferable people and main characters who lack self awareness.

It's kinda hard for me to read this book because the paragraphs are so long. Oh no, it's even worse, everything has no breaks and just mashed into one big block. No paragraphs at all, let alone separate chapters. That's all. Just wanted to say that.