Happiness and Love

By Zoe Dubno

Book Overview

One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year

"Reading the novel is akin to spending time with a witty if merciless observer of other people's idiocies. There's something of a latter-day Holden Caulfield about the narrator...it possesses an enlivening, claustrophobic charge." --The Spectator

Following a young woman over the course of one outrageous and insufferable downtown dinner party at the home of her estranged best friends--an artist and curator couple, whom she now realizes stands for everything she detests--Happiness and Love is a "deliciously scathing" (Vogue UK) debut novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.

From her perch on the corner of a white sofa, in the beautiful apartment of terrible people, our narrator watches the assembled group of artists, writers, and hangers-on and silently, mercilessly eviscerates them in a "nervy and blisteringly funny" (The Wall Street Journal) monologue.

"Told in a single long, savage and hilarious paragraph," this is a novel that can be read "in one delicious go" (Financial Times): the story of an evening that slowly self-destructs, as the guests sip orange wine and await the arrival of a newly famous actress. When the guest of honor finally does arrive, she sets in motion a disastrous end to the evening, laying bare the depravity and decadence of the hosts' empty little lives--a hollowness that the narrator herself knows all too well.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 166806295X
• ISBN13: 9781668062951
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 6.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.5"