Happy

by Celina Baljeet Basra

For fans of Vikas Swarup and Charles Yu, the story of a starry-eyed cinephile who leaves his rural village in Punjab to pursue his dreams—a formally daring debut novel set against the global migration crisis.

In a rural village of Punjab, India, a moony young man crouches over his phone in a rapeseed field near his family’s cabbage farm. His name is Happy Singh Soni, and he’s watching YouTube clips of his favorite film, Bande à Part by Jean-Luc Godard. In fact, Happy is often compared to a young Sami Frey by the imaginary journalists that keep him company while he uses the outhouse. Pooing, as he says, “en plein air.” When he’s not sleeping among the cabbages and eating his mother’s sugary rotis, Happy dreams of becoming an actor, one who plays the melancholy roles—sad, pretty boys, rare in Indian cinema. There are macho leads and funny boys en masse, but if you’re looking for depth and vulnerability, you must make your own heroes.

Then comes Wonderland, an eccentric facsimile of Disneyland that steadily buys up the local farms, rebranding the community’s traditional way of life. Happy works a dead-end job at the amusement park, biding his time and saving money for a clandestine journey to Europe, where he’ll finally land a breakout role. Little does he know that his immigration is being coordinated by a transnational crime syndicate. After a nightmarish passage to Italy, Happy still manages to find relief in food and fantasy, even as he is forced into ever-worsening work conditions over a debt he allegedly accrued in transit. But his daydreams grow increasingly at odds with his bleak reality, one shared by so many migrant workers disenfranchised by the systems that depend on their labor.

At turns funny and poetic, sunny and tragic, Happy is a daring feat of postmodern literature, a polyphonic novel about the urgent, lovely coping mechanisms created by generations of diasporic people. Set against the enmeshed crises of global migration and the politics of labor within the food industry, Celina Baljeet Basra’s luminous debut argues for the things that are essential to human food, water, a place to lay one’s head, but also pleasure, romance, art, and the inalienable right to a vivid inner life.

Genres: Fiction, India, Contemporary, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Adult

260 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 14, 2023

Reviews

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful and devastating story!
My sweet friend Ipek recommended this one to me and I’m so glad I picked it up!

[Noor · Rating 4 out of 5]

the ending... crying at my work computer... more thoughts to come, perhaps in essay form... watch this space :)

[Aida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what an achievement. And to think it's a debut! Just wow.

Celina Baljeet Basra tells the story of Happy Singh Soni, a young, hopeful man from a village of Punjab with a penchant for Godard, dreaming of making it in Europe. While entirely fictional and playing with elements from magical realism, comedy, drama, and social critique, the story of Happy mirrors the lives of many migrant workers and sans papiers in Europe and the wider Global North. Despite, or maybe even because of its novel, almost experimental form, "Happy" is incredibly accessible without sacrificing depth and art. Truly, a must-read.

Transparency: I was gifted a copy by Celina Baljeet Basra, without any request for a review. But I couldn't keep my excitement to myself!

[Kristen Bookrvws · Rating 4 out of 5]

emotional damage

[Divya · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a bit too literary for me. it seemed almost like a collection of postmodern poetry, but it felt so fragmented that it didn't feel like a cohesive novel and felt a bit superficial. i couldn't get too deep into happy's mind or life and none of the other characters were fully realized. i really loved how much thought and research went into the references in the story. i actually heard the author in conversation with another author at a bookstore so i can appreciate the process behind the novel, but ultimately it was not cohesive enough to keep my attention and some parts were so abstract i felt like they didn't serve any real purpose.

[Shannon Wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of those things where you’re unclear as to what’s going on but once it’s all revealed it makes sense. Social commentary about the unlivable conditions of migrant workers, peppered with the innocence and endearing naïveté of our young protagonist. We WILL root for him ✊

[Elin Isaksson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's really hard to review this. The book is basically this: a young guy called Happy dreams about being an actor and we get to follow his journey going through Europe and ending up at a radish-farm working illegally under terrible conditions. I don't think that's a spoiler since that's what the blurb says. The story is told in snippets, like when you write in a notebook with different headings. So it's text conversations, poems, fake interviews and sort of diary entries. Happy the character is very endearing - quite smart but also with a very naive tone of voice. In the beginning of the book I found it laugh out loud funny in parts, got bored during the middle and then was really affected by the end. Never read anything on the subject of working conditions in European farms, other than what I've seen on the news. It's an important issue that I don't think there are enough stories about. Migration, diaspora, global inequalities - all great stuff. The style was honestly a bit annoying though. What am I trying to say?

3.5 stars

[sarah klabunde · Rating 4 out of 5]

didn’t think I’d like the non linear format but proud of myself for sticking it out! the humorous and optimistic tone was kind of eerie bc of the objectively terrible subject matter but that’s what you get in a book about the lives of immigrant workers

[Petri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an early reader copy for this book from NetGalley for free.

Happy Singh Soni is born in a rural village in Punjabi, India. He has a big imagination and dreams of movie stardom inspired by Jean-Luc Godard films. By chasing his dreams he ends up immigrating to Italy and working in restaurants and farms.

Told trough small vignettes that range from imagination sequences to parts told from the POV inanimate objects this book had lot of ideas and heart behind it. Due to the how the story is constructed it's a nice quick read, but at times can feel disorienting.

There's some interesting topics going on about migration workers rights, sexuality, cinema etc. but I felt like the book tried too much at times and due to that felt little superficial at times. Also the tone change at the epilogue was something I was not expecting.

Overall interesting piece of fiction that I'm happy I got to experience, even though it left me wanting more at times.

[Carolina Monteiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not recommend finishing this on a gloomy sunday morning

[Jasmine Jams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately I couldn’t wait for this to be over. It felt so painful to read at times. I think I’m just not a big fan of when the story keeps getting interrupted. Every time there was a “I am a [insert object] I felt so annoyed and frustrated and BORED. I of course felt for Happy, and his struggles made me upset and more cognizant of the struggles that international students and other TFWs go through in Canada being exploited for work.

I was gonna give it two stars but I would never dare give a low rating to a book by a Punjabi author lol. There aren’t enough! I wanna read more!!

Smell review: 3/5. It didnt really have a smell?

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Happy broke my heart 💔

I will think of poor Happy and other migrant workers like him whenever I am eating radishes now.

“Wave if you see us on the road, or far out at sea. Wave, stranger, as a greeting might help us to remember who we are.”

Happy by Celina Baljeet Basram

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the formatting! Just so unclear at times and a little bit all over the place

[SVL · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not love this formatting of the plot in this book, and I HATED the font the publishing group chose for the hard cover, which is why this is 2 stars. While the message of the story is important, the plot was poorly executed in the vignette style the author decided to go with.

This book follows Happy, a cinephile farm worker in Indian who dreams of becoming a movie star and escaping his small village. He is presented with an opportunity to “pursue his dreams” and leave India, but everything is not what it seems when the organization arranging his travel is actually a crime syndicate and Happy ends up in a worst position than he began in, albeit thousands of miles away from his family, and toiling in the very reality so many immigrant farm workers suffer today.

The book plays with elements of magical realism (not my thing), comedy, drama, and social critique, and mirrors the lives of many migrant workers across the globe, suffering in terrible conditions but dreaming of a better life. Happy’s positive outlook on life propelled him to search for a better life for himself, but powers outside his control took advantage of his naïveté, which ultimately led to his downfall.

As previously mentioned, I hated how this was formatted. There is no chapter format and there’s too many characters to keep track of and detract from Happy’s journey. The author writes in titled short segments that could be anything from “words I learned in Italian today” to a voicemail from Happy’s mother. I don’t think it was executed to the best it could have been. Also, I could read literally not one more word in this horrific sans serif font from hell. The whole book felt like you were reading a comedy essay written by a fifth grader, just based on the font.

While the idea is worthwhile, I don’t think this debut novel executed it to the fullest, best extent.

[Ayushi Tandel · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5 stars rounded up) Didn’t love the style of writing in this book but a powerful story about an illegal Indian immigrant in Europe and the exploitation and disillusionment he experiences

[Lillie Guo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5

ugh

not for everybody (a more nonlinear/liquid narrative) but a beautiful, colorful, quick read

[Holly Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this were very sweet and genuinely interesting and unique but gotta say the atypical non linear format didn’t work for me in the way I thought it would the lists and images felt fun but it became hard to follow and started to feel a bit too postmodernist for my liking sad ending also must have done something to me bc I never have this much to say

[Sam Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ouch. The big ouch.

I am so thankful to Astra House Publishing, Celina Baljeet Basra, and Netgalley for granting me physical and digital access to this heartbreaking saga about a young man who dreams for the rest of the world and whose optimism bites him where it hurts. Happy is set to hit shelves on November 14, 2023.

Happy is a tale about an eighteen-year-old boy named Happy Singh Soni, who aspires to move to Europe and become a famous movie star. He's obsessed with cataloging every moment on his YouTube channel and within his cinephile-motivated notebooks. Growing up in Punjab, India on his family's radish farm limits those dreams into becoming reality, but he won't stop until he's breathed Italian air.

In between realistic retellings, readers are curated imaginary sequences from the beautiful imagination of Happy, detailing his desires to be an actor on each page. After months of saving up his measly salary, he affords a unique passage to Italy through hiking mountain peeks, stuffed into moving vehicles, and a more eccentric means of travel. Once he arrives, he's not greeted with the Italy of his dreams. Still, rather a capitalistic and impoverished working nightmare, Happy somehow finds the positive in it all, romanticizing the lodging, the bitterness, and the interactions he comes to cherish as friendships.

This is a beautiful but awfully sad tale because I wanted so much for Happy, but Happy was content with it all.

[Emily Nicoletta · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finishing ‘Happy’, I can’t decide if I want to give Celina Baljeet Basra a big ol’ smooch on the mouth or a big ol’ smack to the face. Maybe both simultaneously?

‘Happy’ was, hands down, the most unique book I’ve read in recent memory. I’m shocked that this is Baljeet Basra’s debut novel, given the magnetic quality of her writing style and the unconventional yet fascinating structure.

This book did an incredible job of shining a light on the deplorable way society treats immigrants and the heartbreaking reality of how our cruel world can quickly squash the hopes and dreams of some of our brightest lights, purely due to the circumstances of their birthplace and the color of their skin.

Watching Happy’s evolution from a goofy, optimistic young man full of passion, drive, and exuberance in India to a husk of himself following his immigration to Europe felt like my heart was being ripped out and curb-stomped.

And the end of this book… the end… my god. Again, I’m still trying to figure out if I love Baljeet Basra or hate her guts for what she put me through. Regardless of my spiraling depression, I am a huge fan and highly recommend ‘Happy’.

[Matthew Shur · Rating 4 out of 5]

How can one rate this book?! I really enjoyed the unconventional delivery—or deliveries, fresh out of the fryer, soaking the newspaper on which they’re plopped (thank you, I tried)— of the narrative.

Certainly didn’t see that ending coming! But I didn’t feel devastated? If anything, I felt this novel effectively drove home an undercurrent of collective responsibility, empathy, etc. Happy and his mum were my favorite characters. I also found them quite relatable (Happy’s brain included), even when I let my imagination fly to meet them where they were at. How might one respond to such situations? How might one move through the world facing what Happy encounters?

——
I would have typed out a “proper” lil’ review, but many times I feel the need to reflect, go deeper, and further organize and pinpoint my thoughts and feelings before posting a reaction to a text. This is all an experiment in letting it flow as is. God bless…😆.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part fantastical musings of oddities, part reflection of the very real truth of the "European dream" sold to migration workers, Happy is a unique story encapsulating both the innocence of naïveté and the very dark reality of our capitalist world. It is raw in its unapologetic reflections on human life, and human living, and not afraid to be crude. It also reads a bit silly at times, as main character Happy is both naïve to the world and almost overwhelmingly positive. While my initial thought was that he annoyed me, perhaps because of that very thing, I had to question why he gave me that feeling. Is it because we are taught to be less happy, and more serious, in order to be taken seriously? Is unapologetic positivity valued less than the constant, goal-oriented, dead-serious productivity of Western living and culture? I believe this book intends to question how we carry ourselves in our societies—the ones that are considered most rich, yet are so because they are also the most exploitative. Joy seems to have little room for our everyday lives—it seems to be exploitation and *hustle* over happiness everyday. Or, more so, happiness is promised in the shape of somethings, rather than what can come from life as it is along with community and support.

But I digress. The way it is written, being polyphonic, I found it never quite hooked me as I would have wished for it to do. It jumped from here to there so much at times I lost the plot, quite literally. Thus the writing was not always of preference for me, though some lines absolutely punched me in the gut, being both beautiful and hard-hitting.

I do recommend it for most who wish to learn more about the subject matter—it, after all, did teach me a lot. We could all learn a thing or two from Happy's happiness and positive outlook, and sometimes even his naïveté.

I just have one question though: What was with the font??? It looks like I'm reading a book that solely consists of e-mails, or something. Not the most pleasant for my eyes.

[Wellney Yarra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked it up at a local bookstore cause the author was going to host a discussion on the book. I appreciated the idea of this book and it touches upon a lot of important topics: undocumented immigrants and how big of a part their labor plays in modern economy, the hypocrisy in dealing with this issue, and the hardship anyone leaving their home country has to deal with. The plot was an interesting one too: we witness how the protagonist dreamt of Europe and how this dream deflates over time as they are confronted with the reality of making a living in Italy as an undocumented immigrant (and in this case, modern-day slavery).

The execution didn’t do much for me, though. The stylistic choices, the over-reliance of vignettes to move the plot along, the polyphony, snippets written in Italian that required the average reader to take their phone out and translate, etc. None of these is wrong (no such thing as wrong when it comes to literary style anyway), but the way the book combined all of this made it feel like less of a novel as the style got in the way of following the plot.

Will say that the style is very experimental and refreshing, though, just didn’t work for me. Kudos to the author for going against the grain in a debut novel.

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, heartbreaking book that challenges -- with a healthy amount of cheek -- what we think fiction is allowed to do, pulling us confidently into its larger-than-life journey. It follows a moony young man named Happy, who lives in a rural village in India and dreams of becoming an actor in Europe. His dream seems to be on the brink of coming true, but what happens is far more insidious. This is a story that unfolds in daydreams, in song, in image, in big hungry bites of imagination. I wept openly on a train when I finished!!

[jordan kauffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

this took me FOREVER but that’s half because i was busy and half because it was slow. i thought the structure was super interesting but it was often hard to follow and i couldn’t tell what was real and what was happy’s voice. he had a really interesting perspective that i wish was developed more. i really liked the end with the different people speaking so i wish there was more of that.

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 a delightful debut of disjointed dreamy prose. Absolutely loved Happy and deepened my understanding of the migrant experience in Europe, the audacity of dreaming, and making the daring choice to leave one's home to try and make them happen. Prepare to cry and laugh in equal measure

[Vandana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very unique book about a topic that’s not much talked about in the US — the plight of migrant workers from Punjab in Italy. Happy was a lovable character and I appreciated Basra’s efforts at sharing the story and framing his story in an unusual way.

[Lghamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

As noted by Megha Majumdar on the cover: Playful, funny, and wildly free.” And of course tragic, as any tale of undocumented farm workers with “coordinators” taking cuts all along the way, except here the players are Indian-Polish-Albanian and the setting is the radish fields of Italy.

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un llibre molt imaginatiu i diferent a tots els altres que he llegit. El protagonista, Happy, té una personalitat que salta de la pàgina i et fa riure i plorar i voler imaginar de manera més boja i a totes hores.

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting snippets of an undocumented worker’s journey, but the disjointed writing style was not for me. Seems like a missed opportunity to showcase an important part of our society.

[Rav E · Rating 3 out of 5]

tragic.