Eh! A little traumatic but overall beautifully written, it just wasn't the right time for me to be reading this unfortunately.

omg I adored these stories so so much. I'm not even sure what it was about them that really captivated me because at the end of the day a lot of them were not 'about' a whole lot, a handful of the stories didn't ultimately 'go anywhere', but jeez the writing was just so pleasant and sucked me right into each story easily. had all my fav themes: womanhood, family, identity, queerness, misogyny and class. definitely interested in anything else Ostlund puts out there.

my one issue w/ it was that the characters started feeling muddled together - a lot of the stories were from very similar perspectives with very similar settings so they didn't stand out against each other super clearly. still enjoyed myself v much though!

Happiness is a uniquely American preoccupation, and if you were to ask me, I feel miserable—and I say this as the highest compliment possible for this collection of short stories. These stories are so well-written that my empathic little heart ached for days after finishing each one.

Through eight short stories and a novella, we explore facets of love, fear, anxiety, childhood, and sadness in a way that is beautifully written and specially evocative.

I feel sad —but I feel something. I would rather read a book that makes me emotional or disturbed rather than a boring one. This is why I love reading, and I am starting a reading journal again.

4 stars. I highly recommend this book to someone who isn't afraid of complexity and feeling deep emotions. Definitely looking forward to reading more of her work.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this!

If you want to feel all the feelings, sadness, fear, happyness and much more, this is the book for you. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the free eARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

Are You Happy? By Lori Ostlund - 3.5/5 stars ⭐
Release date: May 6, 2025.

Are You Happy? Is a collection of eight short stories and one novella that explore class, desire, identity, and the looming threat of violence, particularly that experienced by women and the LGBTQIA+ community. The stories take place in a handful of locations - Minnesota, California, New Mexico - but the characters are not connected; they may live in the same cities, but they lead wholly separate and sometimes very different lives. The characters were linked by these places and little else (though I did notice a lot of the characters were teachers), something I found myself enjoying; I like a short story collection that shows different people living separate lives within a similar geographic area.

The stories had a wandering, meandering quality to them, which worked really well in some stories. In others, however, I felt like this was taken to the extreme, making me wonder why a story had been written about a situation at all if it was going to leave out so much. When writing my review on NetGalley, I noticed a lot of people really enjoyed the short story The Stalker; however, I felt like it just didn’t contain enough for me. I felt like it could have been a bit longer, could have done a bit more to really sink us into the situation and provide a bit more time for the characters and the story. As it was, it felt like passing briefly by a window and getting a snapshot of someone’s life, rather than being able to stand for a few minutes and get a better grip on a specific situation. Maybe that’s just a me thing, and maybe I missed the point of this story in particular, but I think it does need to be mentioned, because it was one of the short stories that moved my rating from what I thought would be a 4 down to a 3.5.

This collection fell prey to what a lot of short story collections do: some stories are simply more enjoyable to the individual than others, and the stories that are less enjoyable bring down the rating of the collection overall. In the case of Are You Happy?, I found that my favourite short stories were at the beginning of the book so, as the collection went on, I found myself less invested than I was at the start. Another thing that irked me in the second half of the book (something which is likely a personal thing) was that the final story was marked as a novella when it did not feel like a novella to me. I think my brain would have enjoyed it a little bit more had it not been marked as a novella, or had I simply not noticed it in the table of contents. To me, it simply read as a short story; sure, it was a little longer than the others, but I did not find the scope wide enough for it to be considered a novella. I did enjoy this story, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit I was a little thrown off by it being labelled a novella.

As for what I really did enjoy, I was a fan of Ostlund’s writing style. Even if I did not love the storyline behind every story, I liked the way Ostlund described things, and the way she used words to make the storylines unfold. The collection also felt quite cohesive to me; sometimes when you read a short story collection, there are some stories that clearly do not belong, but this was not the case here. All the stories felt like they fit in, like the puzzle pieces aligned to make the picture they were supposed to, without any missing or odd pieces that had been slotted in but tried to make an entirely different end result. Given I’ve read a lot of short story collections where this happens, I was glad that this one was cohesive.

I did not find this to be a groundbreaking short story collection; however, I did on the whole enjoy it, and that’s more than I can say about some short story collections I’ve encountered in the past. If you’re big on reading stories with queer characters, like reading about family tensions, identity and desire, or simply want a new short story collection to pick up and take for a spin, I would recommend picking this up when it is released on May 6. It is a cohesive, overall enjoyable collection of stories, and the cover being pretty doesn’t hurt its case either.

Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for giving me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This review will be added to social media (Instagram) closer to the date of release.

As goes with short stories, some are more enjoyable than others. Overall, this was a solid read that I picked up here and there as a palate cleanser. 4/5

These stories delve into deep emotions, wrapped in a blend of dark humor and unsettling realism. I’m a fan of short story collections, though they’re always hard to rate as a whole—some of the stories really stood out, while others didn’t quite resonate with me. The representation of queer struggles was done in a raw, kind of weird -dare i say- way that felt real, like experiencing someone else’s life. A few tales were slower-paced or too open-ended for my taste, but i generally appreciated this anthology.

*real rating 3.5 stars*
this book has (unfortunately) fallen victim to the curse of "this would have been better if i didn't take a month and a half to read it". this was definitely a "it's not you, it's me" moment because i totally could have and should have finished this without taking a ginormous break but unfortunately exam season reared its ugly head and made me give up on reading for a bit.

this book made me feel scared, uncomfortable, and very sad. i really like lori ostlund's writing style and the themes that she chose to write about in these short stories. some had more of an impact on me than others, particularly The Gap Year, The Stalker and A Little Customer Service. the language ostlund uses throughout is really emotive and hits hard. knowing that some of these stories are almost 15 years old is important context for reading this collection.

3.25 ✨

Emotional and deep short stories wrapped in depressing dark humor ✨ I love short story collections, however they are always difficult to rate and I probably should've kept a record of individual ratings for each story — well, that's a reread pile problem.

The Bus Driver, Clear as Cake and The Stalker are perhaps two of my favourites from this collection, and the former has such potential as a full fledged novel or movie adaptation 👀

The representation of queer struggles & feminism throughout these tales has been beautiful — in a tragic, unsettling, realistic way, in a way that doesn't feel like fiction. It's almost as if you're not reading but experiencing someone else's life.

Some of the tales were a little slow-paced/mundane/too open-ended for my taste, however readers who revel in that sort of stuff will enjoy this anthology <3

This book was somewhat creepy, somewhat confusing, and blessedly short. I got 70% of the way through the ebook, only reading that far because I received a free copy from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
The first story changed perspective so often it was hard to tell what actually happened.
A story about a writing class made me realize the author must have taken a lot of these classes. I took a creative writing class in high school, and the author reminded me a lot of my fellow writing class students—earnest, self-impressed, and ultimately boring as hell.
There were stories (multiple) about stalkers and peeping toms, and none of it went anywhere.
Really, skip this book. I’ve read a lot of books from NetGalley over the years and some have been great and others not so much. This was definitely one of the worst. How did the author win a prize for short fiction??

I received an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

A pretty classic set of short stories—plainly written melancholy realism that I thought was just okay, but I am sure other people will connect!

I loved these stories, funny and heartbreaking, always a surprise.

Lori Ostlund is the real deal. I look forward to reading whatever she does next.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley.

ARE YOU HAPPY? By Lori Ostlund is a collection of nine short stories that revolve around the lives of families living their semi-regular life with humor and devastation weaved throughout. The queer stories and relationships provided unique and deeply true themes of longing, connection, loneliness, undoing and love. There was such an immense feeling of being unsettled, in the best way (The Stalker would like a word).

My favorite collections wrap you into each unique story but still fit into a larger moment, and this one did just that. My favorites were Just Another Family, The Bus Driver, The Stalker and A Little Customer Service!

Thank you NetGalley and Astra House for the digital ARC! The cover of this book had me drooling as well. I may have to grab a copy when it comes out next year just to have on my shelf!

OMG. Loved loved loved this collection of short stories. As someone who grew-up on the short stories of Alice Munro, this collection of stories was an absolute gift.

I really loved this collection. I think they’re weird in a way that resonated so well with me. The final story of the family with so much chaos was possibly my favorite out of all of them. I loved the characters in this one and especially loved how relatable they were even in a short story. This one covered so much life in just a few pages I could have read an entire book about Sybil and Rachel and the glass in the steaks. Thanks to Netgally for the ARC.

This book was a hard one for me, I really enjoyed the first story the bus driver, if the author was to write a whole book on that I’d 100% read it as I thought it was great but the rest just wasn’t for me.

I’ve realised I’m not a huge short stories fan so please take my review with a pinch of salt, a few of them it just felt like something was missing

Lori Ostlund has been a favorite ever since After the Parade, my introduction to her style and themes, a novel although she is categorized as a short story author. Well, these stories more than bolster that description. There's not a clinker in the bunch, and to define one or more as weaker than others is not a criticism since her weakest stories are stronger than those considered strong by other authors. She has a definite niche, in that she depicts the lives of women in couples and their experiences with others many times facing discrimination, also the effect that may have on their relationship. Several have cats named Gertrude, most are in long term relationships, many are college educators either adjunct or full, all instructors of writing usually of adult students. And yet every central figure is realistically limned and fully characterized. Her choice of geography could almost be called metaphoric -- many live in Albuquerque but are not from there originally. In fact, one narrator originally from Minnesota remarks "...best way to keep our relationship sound was to live a plane flight away from our families." If pressured to choose a favorite, I would have to choose Just Another Family, which contains most of her favored themes.

Lori Ostland's latest story collection ARE YOU HAPPY? is a fantastic book, from the multi-dimensional characters to the themes of writing and education to the zip of plot in each selection. I really enjoyed the cohesiveness of the collection; the stories seemed part of a bigger but single whole. Ostland's writing is meticulous with detail and emotion throughout, clearly a very talented author. This is the first book of hers I've read, so I'll definitely go back and read her others. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to see this early!

I really loved ARE YOU HAPPY? Lori Ostlund's writing, as always, is smart and insightful. I particularly admire how the stories in this collection are peopled with intriguing characters, each of whom I felt privileged to spend time with. Ostlund is masterful at character development. The collection also feels like a cohesive whole, which can be hard to do with story collections. It's not an exaggeration to say this will rank in my top 10 books of the year.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance e-galley; all opinions in my review are 100% my own.

This collection of short stories was dark, weird, and captivating. If you are a fan of well-timed dark humor this book is for you. I was hooked from the first story. The laser crafted details of the characters created an immersive experience and made it a balancing act of not devouring the entire collection in one sitting and spacing out reading it to savor each story.