"Are You Happy Now?" is a middle of the road book by a middle of the road author. I have never been one to scream "midlist" at something while I was reading it until now. It is not that it is horrible or has poor writing or is incredibly boring in any way. It is like the slew of really bad tattoos the people are getting. There are two things that can make a tattoo bad, it can be poorly executed or the idea for the tattoo can be a bad one from the start. If someone says, "I want Peyton Manning riding a unicorn on my left shoulder blade," it's going to be a bad tattoo, even if Picasso is doing it. (Or Dali. I bet Dali would make a better football player/unicorn tattoo.) The point is that you can't polish a turd, and regardless of the execution, you can't made a bad idea into a good one. This is what "Are You Happy Now?" suffers from. The main character, John Lincoln, is somewhat of a bad guy. I like those narrators that you can't really stand, those real assholes that are only looking out for themselves, even at the expense of others. Those difficult people that you can't believe has the audacity to do what they are doing because honestly I know more of these people in real life than the do-gooder characters that you love. Lincoln is an opportunist at best, a user and abuser at worst. This makes it to where you root against him, hope that he fails, and that he ends up unhappy. Quite honestly there are a lot of people in real life that you feel the same way about."Are You Happy Now?" is published by Amazon and that makes sense. I don't think that anyone else would really publish this and push it into the mass market like they did. And this isn't a bad thing. I'm sure they made their money at $3.99 a download, but it also is a testament to the quality of the novels that they push through their own labels: Not too bad but not something that you will cherish forever. Just something right in the middle. John Lincoln is not happy. He is an editor at a crappy, little publishing company in Chicago, and all he can think about is how much he hates it. He’d really much rather be in New York. Additionally, he and his wife have just separated. Nothing seems to be going his way.A fateful trip on the Brown Line leads John to more trouble. Lincoln’s trouble leads him to Tony Buford, a kooky professor and self-proclaimed poet. Naturally, his new acquaintance wants to be published.Meanwhile, Lincoln’s also reading a co-worker’s promising manuscript. And he’s falling for her. If only he could get her novel published. . . A series of missteps takes this jaded editor on the ride of his life, from poetry slams to the land of lunkers (Wisconsin, of course). This is an amusing novel, but quietly so. It is not as clever as I thought it would/could be.
Do You like book Are You Happy Now? (2012)?
Book certainly holds your interest. Good travel or beach read.
—anuska
Am I happy now that I read this? Not really...
—djeilan
