– I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. –

Published by Riverhead Books on 19 Jun 2018
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Pearl’s job is to make people happy. Every day, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She’s good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion?

Meanwhile, there’s Pearl’s teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of “pursuit of happiness.” As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett—but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job—not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either.

I chose this book because…

I love sci-fi and I love happiness. I mean, who doesn’t want to be happy? Well I guess Rhett doesn’t haha. I’m interested to see what insights about happiness this novel will reveal. Rhett’s situation reminds me of the Pixar film Inside Out, and how we learn that sometimes you need to let yourself feel sadness. It also reminds me of Thunderhead from the Scythe series by Neal Shusterman, in which the all-knowing Thunderhead gives unsavouries a place in the world, recognising that some people find meaning through defiance, so rather than create a false utopia by quelling that defiance, the Thunderhead gives those people a place in the world. So what’s it going to be for Rhett, and how will his mother step up to the plate? There are some serious Black Mirror vibes going on here!

Upon reading it…

This novel had a lot of potential that I don’t think was quite reached. I would have been interested to see the characters and themes explored more deeply, but it felt too broad and left me wanting. Regarding the characters, I felt that the minor characters could have taken more of a backseat in order to better focus on and develop the main characters, the main characters being Pearl and Rhett. Reading the blurb, I had thought that the novel would be written in alternating perspectives between Pearl and Rhett, but it also introduced the perspectives of several other minor characters. However, none of the characters were fully developed, leaving them feeling unresolved. Furthermore, I didn’t find that the characters’ voices were distinct enough from one another either. For those reasons, I feel like this novel would have been more compelling and better served focusing on and building up the characters of Pearl and Rhett.

On the other hand, perhaps the point of the novel wasn’t Pearl and Rhett’s stories specifically, but rather to explore what happiness is to different people, explaining the number of characters explored. Regarding the theme of happiness, I would be interested in further exploring Apricity, the magic machine that diagnoses people and tells them changes they need to make in their life in order to lead a happier one. The solutions that Apricity offered came in the form of simple tasks, i.e. eat tangerines, get more sunlight, amputate part of your finger, end a toxic relationship, etc., and it never offered more than that. Perhaps that simplicity is part of the appeal of Apricity, but there weren’t any deeper explanations to help understand the reasons for those diagnoses, so they didn’t delve into and reveal much about the characters or the concept of happiness.

Is that what happiness is? Can it be achieved by simply following an intelligently curated list of tasks? I thought the novel would explore those questions, but it was more like an anthology of unfinished case studies. Considering these questions myself, I believe as strongly as before that life is a journey, and that figuring out for yourself what brings you happiness is what makes happiness fulfilling.

Sometimes in my most desperate moments, I wish that someone would just hand me a to-do list to achieve happiness and success, and I swear that if someone gave me that list, I would do whatever it took to make my way through it. But life just isn’t like that. Life isn’t what happens at the end; it’s what happens along the way.

All in all, this novel is a good start and may encourage you to explore more on your own.

★★★☆☆

They think every true part of me is just another symptom of my condition. What they don’t understand is that my condition is a symptom of me.

Is happiness what you want?