Happiness opens with the tale of a wolf hunter in the US called into to track a wolf that is believed to have been killing sheep. He observes the surroundings, lies in wait, makes the kill, collects his bounty and then returns to lie in wait for the she-wolf he knows will come out after three days. Two species. Surviving.

London. A fox makes its way across Waterloo Bridge. The distraction causes two pedestrians to collide—Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist there to deliver a keynote speech.

Attila has just been to the theatre, he has arrived a few days early to indulge his passion for theatre and to look up his niece Ama, whom the family hasn’t heard from recently, he will also see an old friend and former colleague Rosie, who has premature Alzheimers.

While we follow Attila on his rounds of visiting his friends and family, all of whom are in need of his aide, we witness flashbacks into his working life, his brief encounters in numerous war zones, where he was sent on missions to negotiate with hardline individuals often operating outside the law. He remembers his wife Maryse, there is deep sense of remorse.

His niece Ama has been forcibly evicted from her apartment in an immigration crackdown, and is unable to do anything to resolve the matter, hospitalised due to her diabetic condition being unstable. Attila responds with the help of the doorman of his hotel, who alerts his network of other hotel doormen, many of whom come from similar origins, to be on the lookout for his niece’s son who has disappeared amidst all the confusion.

And there is Jean, in London to study the behaviour of the urban fox, she has funding for a period of months to observe these creatures, their numbers, how they have come to be living in the city and whether they expose a risk to the humans they live alongside. She recruited a local street-cleaner and through him others, to be her field study fox spotters, the few people likely to regularly observe them.

‘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.’

These networks of connected men, for there are others, all come together with Jean and Attila in the search for the boy Tano. They’ve already texted his picture around to each other, they know who to look out for. They demonstrate something important, in their resilience and ability to adapt to this new environment, many having been through traumatic experiences before finding a semblance of new life in London.

‘Let me do the same for you,’ said the doorman. ‘The doormen and security people, they are my friends. Most of those boys who work in security are Nigerian. We Ghanaians, we prefer the hospitality industry. Many of the doormen at these hotels you see around here are our countrymen. The street-sweepers, the traffic wardens are mainly boys from Sierra Leone, they came here after their war so for them the work is okay.’

The fox lives beside the human but inhabits a different time zone, most humans are little aware of their presence as their nocturnal meanderings cease the minute humanity awakens and begins to disturb a territory that belongs more to them in the small hours of the night.

Jean too remembers what she has left, in America, where she tried to do a similar study on the coyote, an animal that due to the human impact on the environment had left the prairie and moved towards more urban environment.

Finding herself in conflict with locals, who campaigned against the coyote, believing it to be a danger to humans, her voice silenced by those who preferred to extend hunting licences, despite her warnings that culling the coyote would result in their population multiplying not decreasing.

‘If you remove a coyote from a territory, by whatever means, say even if one dies of natural causes a space opens up. Another will move in.’

‘What if you were to kill a number of them, ten per cent of the total population, say?’

‘They’d reproduce at a faster rate. We call it hyper-reproduction. Have larger litters of cubs. Begin to mate younger, at a year instead of at two years. All animals do it, not just coyote,’ said Jean. ‘Humans do it after a war. The last time it happened we called it the ‘baby boom”.’

Now a similar debate arises in London, where the Mayor wants to cull the animals and Jean’s message, based on scientific evidence is being ignored, worse it attracts the attention of internet trolls, flaming the unsubstantiated fears of residents.

This quote from 2013, is likely to have informed Forna’s interest in this issue in the capital.

In June (2013), London’s mayor Boris Johnson reignited a long-running debate over whether the animals should be culled—by jokingly suggesting that the traditional sport of fox-hunting, outlawed in Britain since 2005, should be legalised in the capital.

“This will cause massive unpopularity and I don’t care,” said the colourful mayor, who said he was driven to speak out after his cat was apparently attacked by one of London’s foxes.

Ultimately the novel is about how we all adapt, humans and wild animals alike, to changing circumstances, to trauma, to the environment; that we can overcome the trauma, however we need to be aware of those who have adapted long before us, who will resist the newcomer, the propaganda within a political message.

And to the possibility that the experience of trauma doesn’t have to equate to continual suffering, that our narrative does not have to be that which happened in the past, it is possible to change, to move on, to find community in another place, to rebuild, to have hope. And that is perhaps what happiness really is, a space where hope can grow, might exist, not the fulfilment of, but the idea, the expression.

Hope. Humour. Survival.

Salman Rushdie alludes to this after the fatwa was issued against him when he said this:

“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.”

In an enlightening article in The Guardian, linked below, Forna describes reading Resilience, by renowned psychologist Boris Cyrulnik. Born in France in 1937, his parents were sent to concentration camps in WW2 and never returned. He survived, but his story often wasn’t believed, it didn’t fit the narrative of the time. He studied medicine and became a specialist in resilience.

“It’s not so much that I have new ideas,” he says, at pains to acknowledge his debt to other psychoanalytic thinkers, “but I do offer a new attitude. Resilience is about abandoning the imprint of the past.”

The most important thing to note about his work, he says, is that resilience is not a character trait: people are not born more, or less, resilient than others. As he writes: “Resilience is a mesh, not a substance. We are forced to knit ourselves, using the people and things we meet in our emotional and social environments.

Further Reading

My Review: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

My Review: The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna

Article: Aminatta Forna: ‘We must take back our stories and reverse the gaze’, Writers of African heritage must resist the attempts of others to define us and our history, Feb 2017

Article: Escape from the past: Boris Cyrulnik lost his mother and father in the Holocaust. But childhood trauma needn’t be a burden, he argues – it can be the making of us. by Viv Groskop Apr 2009

It has been a long time since I have read a book that I suspected I would like, and then come to find out that it just wasn't what I expected. I requested Happiness as an ARC because its descriptions on all the "most anticipated books of 2018" lists made it sound like a deep, enthralling novel.

I loved the descriptions in Forna's writing. Her setting and characters are so vividly described that I have no trouble picturing them. I can taste the food, see the parakeets fluttering, hear the foxes and rabbits crying and screaming. Her writing is gorgeous and should be converted to an oil painting to be displayed for all to see. 

Unfortunately this is one of those books where I gave myself until 30% on the Kindle, and then gave myself permission to give up. The writing and language could not save the fact that I did not care about what was happening. I am certain that if I had continued to read everything and everyone that was involved with whatever it was that was happening in the city of London in this book would have been brought together in a grand finish that displays the puzzle in a bright light, allowing you to finally see how all the pieces connect, how all the players mattered to the central idea. 

The problem is that I read to escape. I read to be strung along, to be fed at least a few breadcrumbs along the way to make me curious to read more. You can bore me in the first 30% but if you give me just enough to make me wonder, then you'll hook me for at least another 20%, and by then I'll know for sure if I'll finish or set your story aside. 

I am not interested in Attila, the Ghanaian native whose ex(?) is in a home in London due to early onset Alzheimer's. I'm not interested in Jean, the scientist studying the behaviors of urban foxes and creating wild rooftop spaces for landlords in London. I don't understand why it's important that these two people have found each other and by the time you throw in that Attila's niece and her son have been apprehended by immigration authorities and her son becomes lost and they go to find him...I don't know, man, I just don't care. There isn't enough connective tissue here, it just feels like someone is throwing story ideas at a wall to see what sticks. 

By 30-50% I should have an idea of the characters, what their individual purposes are, how they relate to one another, and what the overarching goal of the plot line seems to be. By 30% I should be at cruising altitude and about to be offered a drink from the cart. I shouldn't be wondering if I'm on the wrong plane, or where my seat is, or why I'm on this trip at all. 

So while the writing was spectacularly descriptive and enjoyable in its own right, the journey was not clear enough to hook me into the rest of the book. You might try it to see if it's more your cup of tea, but for me it's a not so much. Sorry.

Beautiful. This is a thought provoking and sensitive novel about (primarily) two people who meet by chance- Jean, an American wildlife expert studying fox in London, and Atilla, a Ghanian psychiatrist and trauma specialist in London to give a presentation. Their stories- told in back and forth time lines- are so well done, as are the stories of others in their orbit. They band together to hunt for Atilla's nephew Tano who runs away from Child Services and we get to meet a whole wonderful group of people many of us might look past who help with the search, as well as Tano himself. There's also Rosie, who was Atilla's lover and who is now dying of early onset Alzheimer's (and her caregiver Emmanuel.). There are terrific portraits of animals, such as the parakeets (watch the sycamore tree) and fox (Light Bright in particular) in the present as well as in the past (the coyote Jean studied in the US.). Then there are the politicians- Jean's blunt honesty about wildlife in the suburbs and urban areas doesn't win her any friends in the US or the UK. It wasn't immediately clear to me where this was going or why it was titled Happiness but I read happily along through the whole thing- and loved the end. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. I loved this and you will too if you give it a chance and go along for the ride.

“Happiness" is a stunningly beautiful book. I finished it and wanted to start it all over again. I wanted the exciting feeling of falling in love with its characters. This is a book about finding lost things. It juxtaposes the immensities of the world’s problems with the small-scale struggles of nature at war with itself. Attila and Jean are not fearless, but have learned not to be afraid of fear, and their courage and breadth of spirit are breathtaking.

Aminatta Forna’s novel, Happiness, is so good that, when I finished, I just had to sit for a bit in the afterglow. It’s not just that this book has so many of the things that I love—non-standard plot structure with plots woven in and out of each other, set in London, flawed characters who slowly fall in love with each other. What I loved most about this book is what it has to say about suffering and resilience. Over and over, the characters face adversity but come through to the other side, sadder but wiser.

Our protagonists meet near Waterloo Bridge in London when they literally bump into each other. Dr. Attila Asare is a psychologist who specializes in treating civilians who’ve survived war zones (Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Iraq, etc.). He’s in London for a conference where he is to deliver the final keynote. Jean Turone is an urban biologist, who is currently studying London’s foxes. At first, they don’t have much to do with one another, but they keep running into each other. It’s only after Attila’s great nephew goes missing that their friendship starts to develop,

Each chapter contains a short introduction where we see critical junctures in Attila and Jean’s lives. We see the traumas Attila has himself experienced. We see Jean’s fights with people who want to kill the coyotes she used to study in America. Their past struggles with grief and environmental destruction are repeated in their present. Attila, who has saved many peoples’ lives, is watching his oldest friend and former lover succumb to early onset Alzheimers. Then, he has to find his nephew. After that, he is asked to diagnose a woman with PTSD to help her legal defense. Meanwhile, Jean is trying to educate people about London’s foxes and head off plans to cull their population.

Attila and Jean are impressively resilient people. They can fight the same battles, over and over again. Even though it takes a lot of strength, they get out of bed every day to keep working toward their sometimes quixotic goals. I think this book might have been less hopeful than my summarizing so far might have indicated if it weren’t for the foxes and coyotes’ examples. These animals are so adaptable, they’ve been able to thrive in unexpected places. Culling doesn’t get rid of them; they just come back in greater numbers. Every time they come up against a boundary, they find a way around it. They may be out of place, but I couldn’t help but admire them.

Attila’s keynote at the end of the book beautifully sums up the lessons of resilience in Happiness. I’ve had my own traumas, so I find the idea that trauma doesn’t irreparably break most of us incredibly comforting. We’re not what happened to us. And, as Attila argues with his fellow psychologists, without sadnesses and setbacks and traumas to season us, as it were, can we really fully experience happiness? These ideas are why, when I finished the last page, I didn’t really want to move on to the next book like I usually do. I wanted to bask in Happiness for a while.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 6 March 2018.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic, Atlantic Monthly Press and NetGalley for an advance e-copy of Happiness by Aminatta Forna in exchange for an honest review. This is the story of Jean, an American woman studying London's urban population of foxes and Attila, a psychiatrist from Ghana and an expert in the field of PTSD, who is in London to deliver a speech on trauma. The two accidentally meet on Waterloo Bridge and their emotional adventures in London are at the center of this novel. Happiness is a jewel of a book. It is lyrical and captivates the reader, even with the most minute of details. It is an elegant read and I look forward to reading more books by Aminatta Forna.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This book had all the elements of a great story and somehow I walked away from it feeling just meh. It's solid don't get me wrong, but it just didn't feel special.

We meet a few unique characters with Jean and Attila being in the center of the novel. Both are established in their professions. Both have had some considerate life experiences. Jean, a middle-aged divorcé with an estranged son, moved from the US to London to follow her passion for studying animals in urban settings. Attila, a middle-aged widower, is in London to give the keynote speech at a psychiatry conference. They meet on Waterloo Bridge. Their lives become entangled. Both characters are complex, well written, and interesting. The author managed to make me care for them, to want them to succeed. Yet the story is slow and at times plain boring - just like real life. But where was the spark? In between the mundane, real-life sizzles.

I can't quite put my finger on why this book felt underwhelming. Looking at the parts individually, they're all great. Aminatta Forna writes well. This book, in fact, reminded me of Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for its descriptions of living in a foreign land and The Trees by Ali Shaw, for its emphasis on nature's strength to overcome urbanization. Both of these novels received high ratings from me.

All in all, I have to conclude that this book deserves only 3 stars because the magic, that very special something, the thing that makes the book unique from others was, unfortunately, missing.

Happiness is an intricately woven story of two people who have lived full lives, Jean, a researcher of urban foxes, and Attila, a psychiatrist who has worked in the aftermath of the worst human conflicts in modern history. Jean and Attila meet by chance and collect various characters to connect to this story of the challenge of survival, human, and animal.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atlantic Monthly Press for the opportunity to read this e-ARC.

a slowly paced unveiling of the story. beautifully written, as usual for Aminatta Forna.

Aminatta Forna has made the streets of London a stage, the place where we meet Jean, an American scientist who studies the life of foxes in an urban environment, and Attila, a psychiatrist from Ghana, who came to London because of his work. They do not know each other, and yet, some random encounters will occur to slowly and imperceptibly amend their lives. Were these meetings just mere coincidence or is that destiny standing behind it all, creating some invisible connections among the people on those busy city streets?!

One thing is for sure, the ' click ' that happened is irreversible, it connected the two people who have lost the meaning of true happiness in their lives, two distinctive intellects which will allow some new life events to slowly, but surely, enter their lives and get into every pore of their mind, to become a part of their thinking. In just a few days, two people accustomed to solitude, will become the basis for the group of very different types of people, the group that could be gathered only by the fate (or coincidence).

Spontaneity is a word that perfectly describes this book and the course of its actions. It's hard for me to remember when was the last time (if ever) I read a book that is so calm, gentle, lightweight, and yet menages to keep your mind busy and your attention awake. This simple, thoughtful and special book will give you plenty of material for reflection on life, love and connections of everything that surrounds us. In the end, this is a story about the true nature of happiness, only somewhat different from the others.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book. The forces of nature, mankind and how we rely on each other, as well as nature to be whole, is moving and memorable. The characters are unforgettable as well as the lessons you learn from this book.

The premise of two strangers meeting on Waterloo Bridge because of an urban fox was enough to make me want to read this book. I lived in London for ten years and the city and its fox population have a special place in my heart. And now, so has this lovely beautifully crafted novel.

This is a story of two people who have already had a life. Throughout the book we get glimpses of the past that has shaped them into the people they are in the present. Atilla is a psychiatrist from Ghana, who has history in London and is in the city to deliver a keynote speech. He has worked in warzones and has been exposed to the darker side of humanity. Jean is a scientist, who has done case studies on coyotes in her native US and who is now conducting a study into the urban foxes that surround her London home, and enlists the help of the West African local binmen turned fox spotters to find Atilla’s friend’s grandson.

This book has so much going for it. It touches on immigration, both human and animal. human emotion, ranging from grief and PTSD to love and hope. I loved how this book had mature main characters, who were depicted in an intelligent senstive way.

I felt so connected to both Atilla and Jean and enjoyed the tentative connection between them and how it grows so organically. I thought the flashbacks to important moments in their respective lives were very well done and served to understand the present.

The author manages to bring the multicultural city to life beautifully and I enjoyed getting a different (West African) perspective on it.

I found this a very senstive sometimes thought provoking novel that made me smile and question myself and what is important.

This insightful novel captures the interconnectedness of humans and animals alike as it spans across time, continents, circumstances and emotions, with a diversity of characters.

I honestly wasn't a fan of this one. It didn't grab my attention. Ended up not finishing.

Two strangers bump into each other on Waterloo Bridge. At the centre of this book is the developing relationship between these two; Atilla, a Ghanaian psychiatrist and Jean, an American living in London and studying the habits of urban foxes.

Rather mystifyingly the story opens with an account, in italics, of a 19th century Wolfer, working in the States. The description of him tracking the wolf and killing it does not really give us a link to the rest of the narrative. The relevance of this only becomes clearer much later on.

Normal printing is then resumed and we move on to the chance encounter between Atilla and Jean. Atilla is in London, not only to deliver a keynote speech but also to visit his first love who now has dementia and is in a nursing home. Jean had been studying the lives of coyotes in America but after the breakdown of her marriage has come to London where foxes and other wildlife now occupy her time. Both of these people have complicated pasts with lost loves. Both are lonely and damaged.

When Atilla visits his niece and finds that her small son has gone missing, Jean helps organise the search and calls in the network of helpers she uses for tracking her foxes. Gradually Jean and Atilla are drawn closer together.

There are many flashbacks, mainly in italics, to past events, in both their lives. This can sometimes prove confusing and the detailed descriptions, which, although authentic, tend to hold up the main narrative. There are so many strands to this story it is easy to become a bit lost – but as the friendship between the two individuals develops, we are led to examine the society we live in and our co-existence with living creatures.

It seems we are all looking for ‘happiness’.

The author writes well and certainly has a huge knowledge of all the subjects tackled in the book. It might have made for a better read if the story didn’t have quite so many strands, some of which were inevitably skimped over.

Jane

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

This book offered an intriguing premise and made me think about the small events that can really have an impact on our lives, often without us even realizing it. Though there is a mystery in this story, it is deeper than that and really delves into the psychology of the individual characters and the circumstances which brought them to where they were.

A very thought provoking book. Is there such a thing as normal? In the West we are sanitised from death to a large extent- bereavement and loss can be all consuming. But in other war torn parts of the world, death can be an everyday part of life. Does trauma necessarily mean that we are damaged? Or does it mean that we are only changed?
“The trouble with happiness, thought Attila, was that, perhaps because infants seemed such happy creatures, people were led to believe that happiness came with a mother’s milk, happiness was man’s state of nature, of which all else was a warping. The search to return to that state became unending. But they were mistaken, for what they desired so badly wasn’t happiness but a state of prelapsarian innocence, the thing that babies possessed. They wanted desperately not to know the truth.”
This story is also about the interconnectedness of life- not only human but animal and plant life too. And how strange that in the modern western urban world, where wildlife is controlled, people still yearn for that connection to the wild, to nature.
This was a wonderful exploration of the meaning of life, love, loss and what happiness might actually mean in real terms.
I have not read any of this author’s previous work but I intend to in the future.
Many thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

I absolutely loved this book. It is probably impossible not to love it, the two perspectives (one of a scientist's and the other of a psychiatrist's) on our life, destiny, rights on Earth and, most of all, resilience, are chilling but thought-provoking. Through its fragmentary narrative thread we find out how history repeats itself and mankind learn nothing from it: war victims are the same in every troubled corner of the globe, we justify animal killings (foxes, coyotes) by our concerns for safety. Nature has its own mechanisms to cope with aggressive behaviour (though not with extinction), just as human mind has its own mechanisms to adapt, to change and go on. And, as long as you are hopeful, you might find your happiness.

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).