I cannot stop thinking about this book
Every so often, you’ll come across a book that’ll completely take over your world. You won’t be able to stop thinking about it and will steal every possible moment you can to read it. I have read a lot of books this year, but nothing has a hold on me quite like I Want You to Be Happy.
During a recent visit to Books Upstairs, I spotted a copy of I Want You to Be Happy near the front of the shop and decided to treat myself, despite the fact that my bookshelves are already caving from my current collection.
Something was drawing me to Jem Calder’s, and I knew I just had to have a copy. I purchased the book on Sunday and haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Sally Rooney has hailed the contemporary fiction novel about a man in his thirties and a woman in her thirties, describing it as “an irresistible novel that asks complex questions about contemporary life and refuses easy answers.”
Like Rooney, I haven’t been able to put this irresistible novel down. I’m not sure what kind of magic Jem Calder sprinkled over the pages, but this novel is completely intoxicating.
Chuck and Joey meet in a bar. He’s in his mid-thirties; she’s twelve years younger. He’s long abandoned his ambition of becoming a novelist and now works as a copywriter at a big ad agency. ‘Lead copywriter,’ he corrects himself. Joey lives paycheck to paycheck on her barista wages and privately dreams of making it as a poet.
They go back to Chuck’s luxury flat-a world away from Joey’s cramped house-share, the crumbs in her bed. Soon, Joey’s imagining a future between them, and Chuck’s moving on from a mistake in his recent past. Amazing, how meeting a new person can make you feel so new.
I haven’t read a novel with such an addictive couple at its heart since One Day or Normal People. It’s excruciating in its honesty, beautifully relatable, and so striking that you’ll feel like you’re living in Joey and Chuck’s complex ‘relationship’.
You’ll be stealing away time to get another page in, even on your busiest days. This novel is a complete triumph, and undoubtedly one of the best books I have read in years.
I Want You to Be Happy is unputdownable.
Buy here.
