Whatever Makes You Happy

What is happiness?

For Sally Farber, the main character of Lisa Grunwald's lyrically written and impressively thorough new novel, Whatever Makes You Happy, the search includes cleaning out her mother's apartment, considering an affair with an artist, sending her two children away to summer camp for the first time, and attempting to write a book on happiness.

And finding happiness ? in all of its many forms ? is no small challenge.

It turns out it's much easier to define what happiness isn't than what it is: It isn't illness or grief. It isn't depression, sadness, misery or loneliness. The definition of happiness isn't solid, it isn't something that can be pinned down; it varies with time or place, from person to person. 'It's a shimmer,' Sally explains.

And yet, she continues her pursuit of it, with entertaining and illuminating results: Is it genetic? Constant? Fleeting? Earned? Learned? Is there a prescription for happiness? A standard of happiness? A theory that best explains how to achieve it? Is it inside someone or does it require a search elsewhere?

Populated with highly recognizable characters, filled with elegant phrasing and a familiar first-person tone, the book manages to ask (and somehow semi-answer) all the important questions of what it means to be a woman, a daughter, a wife, a mother, a partner, a friend, a member of a family, and a person. The biggest question is, of course, how to be happy. Whether or not she finds the answers, this book is sure to make you wonder about your own search.