Aminatta Forna, Happiness (2018)

Happiness is a story of subtle changes. Aminatta Forna’s protagonists, an African psychiatrist specializing in trauma and an American naturalist, meet by accident on a bridge in London. Coincidence repeats and a relationship is built over a relatively short time period of time based on open-mindedness, shared natures, and eventually physical attraction, but what is this story about? Forna seeks to keep us interested in the slow evolution of these characters’ relationship by weaving each person’s past in with present events––which include the search for a lost child, dealing with the needs of a former lover institutionalized for dementia, and being tuned into a city populated by foreign nationals, foxes and escaped pet birds.

At one point, the psychiatrist, whose name is Attila, suggests happiness might be found in a village in Cuba which is cut off from that island’s poor infrastructure. Even if that were true––and I don’t think spending almost every waking moment trying to survive can be described as happiness, I believe Forna recognizes it’s not a realistic option. She’s asking whether happiness can be found in the middle of a world where people take out their anxieties on animals and people who look different. Her answer seems to be yes, which is encouraging. Happiness is attainable she seems to be saying by challenging convention––the psychiatrist does so in the book’s final pages––and by adapting. Animals seem better at this than humans, but humans can do it.

Forna is an award-winning author. Her mastery of the language is one of the joys of reading the story, as is her ability to keep us engaged. It helps if one is interested in psychiatry and ecology, but even if those subjects aren’t on the top of your list, Forna doesn’t shove either down the reader’s gullet. I found Attila’s critique of his profession more interesting than Jean’s battle with fox hunters, in part because it has more universal applications and because that I’m not certain whether the problem of foxes in London is real, and if so, whether, as Jean, the American, suggests, it exists elsewhere. We have coyotes––another animal that plays a part in Happiness––in the Adirondacks where I summer, but I’ve never heard of them killing family pets in Albany.

It took a while for me to “get into” Happiness, but toward the end I was less hesitant about picking it up. Some readers will be turned off by the opening chapters. Stick with it, is my recommendation. You may find you’re happy you did.