This reading group guide for Happiness and Love includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

After fleeing the suffocating art world of New York for a new life in London, our narrator returns to the Bowery years later to attend a dinner party hosted by Eugene and Nicole, an artist-curator couple counted among the most pretentious circles of New York society. It’s the evening after the funeral of their mutual friend Rebecca, and though the narrator finds herself surrounded by old friends, she now looks on them in contempt. She despises herself for being lured back to the very world she sought to escape for a dinner party that isn’t even being thrown in the deceased Rebecca’s honor, but for up-and-coming actress who is by now several hours late. Through the narrator’s eyes, we watch as the dinner unfolds, setting into motion a disastrous end to an insufferable evening.

With razor sharp wit and a cutting critique of high society, Happiness and Love is a piercing novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.

Topics and Questions for Discussion

The narrator returns to a world she used to be a part of, now as an outsider in “the company of the worst vultures in the world” (page 65) at a party hosted by a “monstrous couple” (page 183). Discuss the reasons for the narrator’s attendance at the party. Have you had a similar experience of returning to a place as an outsider or accepting an invitation that you would rather have declined?

The narrator is subject to interrogation by her fellow partygoers: she’s asked whether she “had been privately educated, if [her] college had been prestigious and culturally relevant, or just prestigious, if [she] had grown up with intellectuals, or if [her] parents had lots of money” (page 83). How does the narrator’s class status play a role in her life as an artist or the way that she is perceived? Discuss the various ways in which class functions throughout the novel.

The narrator is scathingly critical of Eugene and Nicole—their taste, their superficiality, the way they treat their friends and acquaintances, and particularly their social climbing and empty careerism. How many of her critiques also apply to her own behavior? Is she complicit in some of the systems—around wealth and privilege, access to opportunities, and creative and artistic success—that she criticizes?

Consider the structure of the novel: the first-person point of view, the absence of paragraph breaks, and the use of italics. How does the structure impact your reading experience? How would your experience of the novel differ if it were told from a different perspective?

The narrator describes Rebecca as someone with a strong drive towards self-mythologizing, though not always with enough self-awareness to tell a compelling story. How did Rebecca use her personal narrative in her relationships with others? In Rebecca’s life, where was the conflict between the stories she told about herself and the way the narrator perceived her?

Happiness and Love takes place over the course of a dinner party, in a closed space, on one night. How does the setting constrain the action of the novel?

The narrator says that Alexander was one of the first people to take her seriously as a writer. How have her feelings about him changed by the time the novel begins? How have they evolved differently as artists?

What is the relationship between art and object for people like Nicole and Eugene? How does ownership change their view of the art and artists they surround themselves with?

How does the story portray the role sexual politics plays in the trajectory of up-and-coming artists? Identify are a few moments when sex and sexuality make a difference for a character’s career.

Why does the actress remain unnamed, and how does her late arrival complicate the dynamics among the party attendees? Discuss the ways the actress differed from or resembled the character you were expecting.

Imagine the novel from the perspective of another character. Discuss with your group how, say, Nicole would narrate the evening.

At the end of the book, the narrator wishes “happiness and love” for Alexander, Eugene, and Nicole, while also wishing for bad things to happen to them. What do you make of this? Can both be true?

Enhance Your Book Club

Attend an art-related event in your city—a gallery opening, an art show, a poetry reading, or a concert, etc. Observe the people around you. Can you draw any parallels between them and the characters who inhabit the art world in Happiness and Love?

Throw a dinner party! Invite a mystery guest and tell them to show up late. See what happens!