📚 r e v i e w 📚
Are you happy now - Hanna Jameson


If you’re looking for a pandemic story that doesn’t involve the usual covid related illnesses all going on while a group of friends just try to get on with their lives - give this a try. I’ve previously read a book by Hanna Jameson and she does intriguing dystopia well - you never get quite what you were expecting and this is no exception.

Are you happy now captures all the feelings of lockdown with an extra dose of sci fi on top. Look out for it in the new year.


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Set at the end of a pandemic in America. At a wedding a young guest sits down and doesn't get up again. This scene is repeated all over the world. This was a good read until the last quarter of this book as it became very surreal and completely lost it's way. It was very confusing. The premise was good but unfortunately the story fell flat.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

Thank you yo NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC. This is a hard book to review partly because the events that form the main plot are never really explained. The characters felt very real and relatable, which for me is great writing. This book was very readable, beautifully written and really interesting concept for a book, I haven’t actually read anything like this before and loved how it got you thinking about your own life. I definitely felt unfulfilled with the story, the ending was far less satisfying than the beginning. I wish there was an explanation of what was happening with everyone, I think if it had that it would have hit the mark for me. I would definitely recommend this book to others and I’d love to hear their thoughts. I got a lot of sally rooney writing vibes which for me is great.

3.5 stars

I was stunned by this book - so much depth, emotions and thoughts unfolded page after page.
While the premise seems like it will be a "what is this mystery pandemic" sci-fi story, it's really not. It's both intimate and all encompassing, metaphorical and real.
We follow 4 characters, and while it can be tricky to make it work, here it does. We get events (sometimes the same, sometimes not) seen from different eyes, a lot of emotions and inner thoughts, in a way that makes everyone believable, and their fights and self-deprecation heartbreaking as we witness their interactions from different angles. A couple of scenes made me cry from sheer emotion, even when the words Yun and Andrew wanted to say were not said - but a reader, like the other characters, knew.
And all of these very intimate stories are set in the backdrop of a pandemic where a lot of people start dropping on the floor, sitting in a catatonic manner, and never come to life again. This works so much as a metaphor about the human psyche, but also as a way to show us modern American society and why we can feel anxious or depressed if we live in a similar way.
There's some philosophy about Situationist philosopher Guy Debord and the (capitalist-driven) spectacle that I'd like to look into more later. Andrew is a philosophy teacher who talks to his students about experience vs spectacle (which is already meta in a novel), then later Fin cries as he explains to Andrew his unique interpretation of a ballet. This is just an example of the layers that are present in this novel. Everything feels purposeful even if not all is explained in the end (on purpose as well).
It's an unusual book that I enjoyed a lot and recommend.

I love this book. It had a unique concept and was refreshingly unique. I particularly enjoyed the wedding setting and how the four main characters were brought together. I particularly liked Fin but I thought that all of the characterisations were fantastic. A great read, not like anything that I've recently read.

I may be jaded by too many pandemic books at this stage, but this felt very flat. I can forgive the low-key nature of the actual pandemic storyline, but I couldn’t buy into the main characters, their motivations or their relationships. I found myself increasingly irritated with the book as it went on I’m afraid.

Bonus star for referencing MY KZ. YR BF

I had to read this book as I enjoyed The Last by Hanna Jameson previously. The concept seemed a little odd; a pandemic of people just sitting down and being unresponsive for no known reason. I have known someone who suffered one of the conditions this was compared to and this made it difficult for the pandemic to sit right with me to begin with. It soon made a bit more sense as we saw the pandemic from multiple points of view and started to get closer to the characters. As with many pandemic/end of the world storylines, the characters were actually more important than the pandemic itself. I enjoyed being taken into their world, but still found I was wanting a few more answers about how the pandemic had come about by the end of the book.

A young couple meet at a wedding. Their experience is interrupted by a strange event when a fellow guest sits down on the floor and refuses to get up. Soon this is a frequent happening across the country and across the world. Following four main characters, their lives go on while this strange episode continues to affect everything around them. A dark and interesting read.

I really enjoyed Hanna's first book, but this one just didn't suit me for whatever reason. Maybe it's just end of year blahs, maybe it was the constant talk about how despressing everything is and how the sane thing to do is go insane, maybe it just wasn't my style. Whatever the reason, I hope it does well for other readers, because I do think Hanna is very good, and I hope I'll like her next one better.

4 ½ stars (rounded up because of andrew)

“That this was the trade-off. The price of happiness. In order to feel happy he had to feel everything.”


A quietly crushing yet devastatingly tender work scintillating with insight and emotional intelligence. With acuity and empathy Hanna Jameson presents her readers with a captivating narrative chronicling four people’s attempts at happiness despite a looming health crisis: more and more people are literally sitting down and seemingly giving up on life.

“He didn’t want to die, he just wanted to stop, to cease, sit down. Maybe just sleep, for a year or maybe forever.”


Even more so than in her previous novel, The Last, Jameson bypasses the usual apocalyptic storylines, as she grounds her quietly dystopic concept firmly into reality. There is a minimalism to Jameson’s alternate/what if reality that brought to mind the subdued yet ominous world-building of authors such Kazuo Ishiguro, Emily St. John Mandel, Ling Ma, whose works are often characterized by a faintly ominous atmosphere.

“Boy meets girl at a wedding and the world ends. The classic meetcute.”


The novel opens at a wedding reception in NY, on a hot summer night. At first, we principally follow Yun, who is 29 and for years has been trying to make a living as a musician. He meets and is taken by Emory, a journalist who exudes wit and confidence. Their meet-cute comes to an abrupt halt when one of the s sits down and refuses to get back up. As the weeks go by, and Yun and Emory’s attraction blossoms solidify into something more solid, rumors of more and more cases reach Emory’s ears, and she decides to publish an article on the matter. This goes viral and she receives a lot of backlash. The lack of information on the whys and hows of “psychogenic catatonia” contribute to people’s growing panic and an avalanche of misinformation leads many to believe that psychogenic catatonia is either the beginning of the end or that it only affects ‘weak’ young people. Although Yun and Emory’s relationship eventually see them adopting the rhythms and routines of a couple, their dynamic shifts. Yun’s depression runs deep, casting everything around him with gloom. His self-doubt sees him pushing away those who care for him, such as Emory, his best-friend Andrew, and his own family. Perpetually dogged by his own sense of inadequacy, his growing self-absorption, even if of the miserable and negative variety, soon affects his empathy and well-being.

“He wondered why he always seemed destined to be slightly too far ahead or too far behind his own life.”


Emory on the other hand attempts to help him but as the world around her becomes more and more weighed by bad news, she also struggles to make sense of everything that is going on and the gnawing guilt she feels towards her article. For all her attempts to make things work and his longing to be happy, content even, their relationship continues to fray.

“Emory couldn’t imagine what it felt like to inhabit space you truly owned. Cities were hostile to anyone who couldn’t count on the split rent and utilities of partnership. Being one person was more expensive than she had been taught to anticipate.”


We later return to the wedding scene, except that this time we follow two different guests, Andrew and Fin. Both are there with their soon-to-be exes. They properly meet later on, in a gallery. Despite his best efforts, Andrew, a 31-year-old professor who has recently gone through a fairly amicable separation from his wife, finds himself falling for Fin. Not only does Andrew slowly come to terms with the desires and knowledge that he had so long suppressed, but he is wary of falling for Fin, a 20-year-old ballet student hailing from London. Fin too is filled with doubt, and seems always braced for the worst-case scenario, of Andrew’s inevitably disinterest, of failing at what he loves, of not being good enough. Yet, despite their worries, the two have fallen fast and hard for each other. As their relationship becomes more serious, Andrew and Yun’s friendship seems to come undone.

“He wondered if a love not properly expressed mutated into something jagged and unwieldy like metal, something that could kill you.”


As the characters contend with old and new hurts, hidden feelings, loneliness and longing, psychogenic catatonia continues to threaten their horizon. Jameson seamlessly switches points of view, often adopting a nonlinear narrative and or using foreshadowing to build and maintain tension. Her prose brought to mind Hanya Yanagihara, Donna Tartt, and Scott Spencer. Jameson’s prose effortlessly moves between registers: from presenting us with clear-cut and incisive descriptions (of the character’s feelings, thoughts, actions, and surroundings), to using her language to evoke with striking intimacy and poignancy the mood and nuances of a certain moment/scene. Jameson’s style maintains a balance between crisp yet opaque, at times eliciting in dazzling detail the state of mind of a character, at times allowing room for the ambiguous nature of her character’s fears and desires to shine. Her dialogues rang true to life, not only in their rhythms but in how they often revolved around or hinted at unspoken feelings. The setting, mostly ‘post’-covid NY, is brought to life. Jameson captures just how easy it is to feel lost and alone in such a city, while also incorporating discussions on current politics and on America’s healthcare service.
Jameson presents us with a painfully realistic portrayal of depression: not only the many ways in which it manifests in the person affected but on its eventual effects on the people who love them; rather than indicting Yun, Jameson makes us feel for him. We eventually may grow saddened by his inability and unwillingness to accept other people’s help and the way he weaponizes his own hurt and disappointment. Despite the melancholic tone permeating much of this novel, there are so many moments and scenes that will fill readers’ hearts with hope and love. I was 100% invested in Andrew and Fin’s relationship, and seeing them be vulnerable with one another really pulled at my heartstrings. Andrew and Yun’s relationship also gave me all sorts of feelings, and I found myself filled with sorrow on their behalf.

Jameson uses this ‘is the world ending?’ scenario as a backdrop to some profoundly poignant character studies and as a bouncing board to interrogate happiness, love, self-destruction, depression, suppressed and/or unrequited feelings and many more. I found Jameson’s examination of happiness thoroughly captivating. How some people set themselves up for failure and disappointment by never allowing themselves to be happy, always comparing what they have unfavourably with what they envisioned. Often, rather than wondering why they feel perpetual unhappy and dissatisfied, they blame others for not meeting their expectations. Or they hold others responsible for not making them ‘happy’. To cope with this constant sadness and satisfaction they make themselves believe that being with someone else or doing something else or being somewhere else is what will make them happy.
Jameson captures the current zeitgeist, as she articulates her characters’ very contemporary malaises: from daily anxieties and depicts their experiences with precarious jobs and housing, the ever-present FOMO, ennui, and their growing nihilism at the world they live in. Many of the characters in this novel feel simultaneously unmoored yet stuck, overcome by their own impotence in face of psychogenic catatonia and a world that, against all odds, keeps going on. Psychogenic catatonia plays a symbolic role in the story, as those affected seem to be giving up on participating in life; no longer bound by social norms, they lash out at anyone who attempts to interfere with them, refusing to get up, talk or eat. Whether their ‘sitting down is an act of resistance or surrender, is a question that underlies much of the narrative.

Throughout the novel, Jameson explores happiness, adulthood, loneliness, and connectedness. Her characters deal with failure, disappointment, and their own impotence, ‘smallness’, in the face of all that is going on in their world. I loved how many moments of vulnerability, kindness, and love we got. I also found myself relating very much with the many instances where characters are struggling to cope: with their own life, with their own unhappiness, and with taking accountability. Yun, Emory, Andrew, and Fin’s flaws and idiosyncrasies are what made them memorable and real. Although I am more of a Yun/Fin, Andrew had my heart. He was such a gem. His kindness, his alertness to other people's feelings, his selflessness…getting to know him was a delight.

The narrative’s self-awareness adds to the story. Not only does Jameson touch upon the notion of ‘main character syndrome’ but she reflects on the concept of a narrative arc, examining stories' tendency to provide some sort of closure for their characters. Jameson resists doing this, which will inevitably annoy readers and I have to say that the what-ifs scenarios presented by the ending were the only thing that I did not love about this novel.
Are You Happy Now makes for a deeply moving novel exploring the sadness and happiness of its main characters as they grapple with ordinary and extraordinary situations. While I was reading I felt many things: apprehension, joy, sadness, and tenderness. Are You Happy Now is a striking novel that for all the heartache it causes me, I look forward to revisiting again.

A beautifully written but strange and unsettling book. I enjoyed the exploration of the main characters lives but found it all a bit too dark for my liking. Perhaps I was just looking for a bit more of a positive vibe.

The novel had an interesting premise but it was not followed through on the narrative. Elegantly written, the tone was dark and I found it a difficult tead.

This is a really hard book to review, partly because the events that form the main plot are never really explained or at the forefront, leaving us with four characters who are all a little unlikeable in their own way (which makes them very real) almost drifting through the plot. But having said that it was very readable - beautifully written - in a melancholic, slow way.
It's a New York wedding of a thirtyish, professional, reasonably affluent couple. The guests behave as guests do: a woman makes a move on a man, a man makes a move on a waiter, a couple try and keep the illusion of their happiness alive, when a fellow guest sits down and refuses to move. She appears to be in a catatonic state, only when people try and move her she explodes into extreme violence and her heart rate is racing. There is no rousing her. She's hospitalised but dies within two weeks. Strange and upsetting for those that witness it but a one off. Only a few days later someone sits down at a music festival, and more and more. Soon sitting down has spread across the world, more prevelent in the west and amongst 20-50 year olds but affecting and killing millions. Is it it a disease or is it a choice?
The book follows four people from the wedding, Emory and Yun who hook up at the wedding, Yun's best friend Andrew whose own marriage is crumbling and Fin, a young English ballet dancer looking for a way out of his relationship and finding a convenient waiter to help him, as they navigate their way through an unsettling world. one which they witnessed the birth of, knowing that at any time they or their loved onces could be next.
Not so much a dystopia as an examination of the human spirit, this is an elegant, elegiac read. An interesting concept.

I couldn’t get into this story, I kept expecting it to go somewhere but it never did, just seemed to fizzle out. The storyline regarding the “illness” seemed unbelievable and then miraculously cured itself. Not a book I enjoyed or found gripping.

A hard book to categorise and, to some extent, also a hard book to read. We’re introduced to four people attending a wedding in New York: Yun a musician and DJ, Andrew an associate professor, Emory an aspiring news reporter and Fin – the youngest at just twenty years old – a ballet student. At some point during the celebrations a girl making her way to the bar suddenly sits on the floor. She doesn’t get up, she’s uncommunicative and all efforts to lift her are met with a snarling, snapping response. In the following weeks a number of similar cases come to light. Nobody is sure if this, seemingly irreversible, behaviour is caused by some kind of virus or disease, or whether it’s something else.

The surprise here is that with this tale we don’t take the path well trodden when is comes to such beginnings. Instead, the broader events sit in the background whilst in the foreground we’re invited ever deeper into the lives of the people we’ve met and a small number of fringe characters. New relationships blossom whilst existing links are sometimes threatened, career opportunities are opened for some but revenue streams are closed down for others; in short, life goes on. The element I wasn’t expecting, given the focus here is predominantly focused on the Millennial generation, is the pervading sense of disenchantment that seems to haunt this demographic. It’s as if many have concluded that there aren’t now and there won’t in future be any real opportunities for them, that this isn’t a world worth living in any more. Consequently, a general mood of disengagement with the people that surround them and even from life itself seems almost to be the norm.

The cause of this malaise isn’t explicitly explained, but there are hints that the lack of positive action taken by previous generations regarding environmental issues added to the fact that the cost of essentials such as health care and housing have spiralled to unmanageable heights are contributory factors. Could it be that some people are actually giving up on life either as a result of being driven to severe depression or even as an act of rebellion? In truth, I found it all rather hard to decipher. And yet I was increasingly becoming fascinated by and invested in the lives of the key players, particularly with regard to their relationships with those closest to them. This I could understand and I wanted them to succeed, I wanted them to find happiness.

The unsettlingly dark mood of this book caused me to struggle through the early chapters, but the quality of the writing, the deft character development and also the way in which the story slowly evolved gradually grew on me and finally trapped me. By the end I was burning the candle at both ends desperate to see how it all played out. This writer is very adept at stringing interesting sentences together and creating scenarios and structures that challenge and tease. Hannah’s last novel The Last was one of my top reads of 2019 and though this one lacks the instant punch of that book I did grow to appreciate it, even if I’m still trying to unravel elements of its message.

I thought the premise of this book sounded really interesting but throughout, just when you thought the book was about to get going, it sort of sputtered to a stop. It's a shame as it was my curiosity about the pandemic that kept me hooked but left my feeling very unfulfilled.

Are You Happy Now has four main characters - Emory, Yun, Andrew and Fin. They’re all in attendance at a friends wedding, when one of the guests sits down, and becomes unresponsive. If you try and get them to respond, or pull them up, they growl, and scratch, and scream. Thus begins a new pandemic.

Cases rise, people die, but it all feels like a background noise to the personal lives of our main characters, and the ins and outs of their relationships.

This is a book clearly born out of the covid pandemic - how an illness can sweep the world/country, but day to day life eventually continues on (though it never seems to really stop in this book). It also reflects on the hardships the youth of today face, and how hard it is to remain hopeful in the face of that.

I’m really not quite sure where I stand on this book. It took me a while to read it, but I always felt interested in where the story was going, even if it wasn’t fully meeting the expectations I had going in to it. I did find the writing well done though, and the characters did feel fleshed out and real, even if I didn’t particularly like any of them very much.

I was very tempted to up the book to four stars for the final chapter alone, but…in all honesty the book is a consistent three star. Not great, but certainly worth a read, in my view.

Thank you to Penguin General U.K. and Netgalley for the early copy to review.

Four characters that are just not connecting with each other or with the reader. The pandemic story starts off in an interesting way, but then nothing happens. We never find out what it was, it never connects with the characters and so the most interesting part of the book serves no purpose. Such a shame because the idea was good

Sorry but this novel I couldn’t finish. From the blurb I thought it would be right up my street but in reality I just didn’t care enough about the characters and the ‘epidemic’ seemed a bit too sci-fi for my liking.

A typical wedding, singing, dancing, flirting, too much to drink and falling out, we have all been to one of those. But this wedding had something different, a young woman sat in the middle of the dance floor, totally still and completely catatonic. The wedding introduces us to all the main players and starts the book off with a bang. As news arrives of similar situations, predominantly a mass “sit down” at a music festival, people start to think there is an unleashed virus, an epidemic, a plague of sorts, affecting the public. It appears to indiscriminately select its victims, with no warning, and there is no cure. The majority of victims die within a week or two, with only a few ever recovering. Despite their best attempts, scientists and doctors are unable to find a cause or a remedy.

The blurb for this book was so good, I really looked forward to reading. The first half of the plot was good, with the illness raging uncontrollably throughout USA and Europe, and was very interesting. Sadly the story then became more character focused, which would have been fine, but they were pretty awful, with only Andrew having any redeeming features at all. I really couldn’t get to grips with the second half of the book, found it a real struggle to read and lost interest. Far too long and drawn out.

I did finish the book, but felt there were more questions than answers and pretty inconclusive. Too many loose ends, a reason/cause of the pandemic was needed. A book that failed to deliver on its promise.

2.5*

Thank you NetGalley.