Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS CHOICE

A whipsmart funny affecting novel about a young woman who takes a job at a tech company looking to break into the happiness marketeven as her own happiness feels more unknowable than ever

Four years into writing her stillunfinished philosophy dissertation and anticipating a marriage proposal from her longterm boyfriend Evelyn Kominsky Kumamoto is wrestling with big questions about life How can she do meaningful work in the world Is she ready for marriageand motherhood But no one else around her seems to share her ambivalence Her relentlessly optimistic Midwestern boyfriend has no hesitation about making a lifelong commitment her best friend Sharky seems to have wholeheartedly embraced his secondchoice career as a trend forecaster and her usually reserved father has thrown himself headlong into a new relationshiphis first since her mothers passing when Evelyn was fourteen

Swallowing her doubts Evelyn makes a leap leaving academia for a job as a researcher at the thirdmost popular internet company where her team is tasked with developing an app that will help users quantify and augment their happiness Confronting Silicon Valleys normreinforcing algorithms and predominantly white culture she struggles to find belonging as a biracial person as an Asian American and as someone who doesnt know how to perform social medias vision of what womanhood should look like As her misgivings mount an unexpected development upends her assumptions about her future and Evelyn embarks on a journey toward an authentic happiness all her own

Wry touching and sharply attuned to the ambivalence atomization and illusion of control that characterize modern life Happy for You is a story of a young woman at a crossroads that movingly explores how even in this mediated world our emotions contradictions and vulnerabilities have a transformative power we could never predict