Happy are the happy / Yasmina Reza ; translated from the French by John Cullen.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The internationally acclaimed playwright and novelist Yasmina Reza stages a band of eighteen characters at war with their lives, with only humor to sustain them

Happy are the loved ones and the lovers and those who can do without love. Happy are the happy. --Jorge Luis Borges

Schnitzler's La Ronde gives these twenty short chapters their shape while Borges's poem gives them their content. As we move from story to story, thrilled to reconnect with an old acquaintance from an earlier scene, we can't help but admit that we are very much at home in this human comedy that understands all too well the passing thoughts, desires, actions, fears, and mistakes that we have and make day after day, but that we would be incapable of rendering with such acuity and compassion.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Starred Review. This enjoyable work from France-based novelist and playwright Reza (The God of Carnage) takes its title from Jorge Luis Borges: "Happy are those who are beloved and those who love and those who can do without love. Happy are the happy." Comprising 22 short chapters, it concerns happiness in one's personal life, with spouse, children, parents, and friends. The first chapter sets a humorous tone as Odile and Robert go shopping for cheese in a crowded supermarket, arguing over Morbier and the junk food Odile has placed in the cart for their children. A few of the characters in other chapters are definitely quirky: a man playing cards with his wife gets so agitated that he eats the king of clubs, for instance, while another sincerely believes he is Celine Dion. With sharp insight, Reza quickly penetrates the thoughts and actions of the characters to reveal just how happy (or not) they really are. VERDICT Winner of the Le Monde Prix Litteraire francaise 2013, this charming novel will make all Francophiles want to move to France immediately. What a delightful, witty slice of life! [See Prepub Alert, 8/11/14.] Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Playwright and author Reza's newest book is a fragmented novella of vignettes, all of which function as independent short stories. Reza follows more than a dozen characters struggling with marriage and loneliness-opening with "Robert Toscano," a hilarious study of patience and insistence revolving around a married couple in France, the Toscanos, who get into an escalating argument over cheese (he doesn't buy the kind she likes). Reza's askew humor pervades the book-four chapters later, we find out that the seemingly perfect Hunter family (bitterly envied by the Toscanos) has a secret: the son is not interning abroad, he is in a mental institution because he believes he is Celine Dion. Reza's vignettes are also dark (a man's incestuous relationship with his brother later turns him into a sexual masochist) and sardonic (a man accuses his wife of wanting to be buried together for social reasons: "My wife is counting on the grave to outfox spiteful gossips, she wants to remain a petit bourgeois even in death"). Reza's stories build and build, creating a complicated, multifaceted world-a world that is unmistakably Reza's. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.