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Happy Days
What kind of man buys his grave at the age of eighteen and chooses to spend the rest of his life in a rest home at thirty-five? Meet Antoine, the curious hero of Laurent Graff's Happy Days, an odd young man who somewhat prematurely acquiesces to his terminal destiny. The ultimate fatalist, Antoine decides to play hooky from life at the Happy Days rest home. Despite the pronounced difference in age, he is accepted by the residents and quickly settles into a routine. He leads a peaceful and uneventful life there until the arrival of a dying woman with whom he forms a unique bond and goes on a very special journey. This darkly funny novel — the first of Graff's to be published in English — was awarded the Prix Millepages 2002.
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
July 13, 2018
3.5, rounded up.
I came across this book in a magazine article on the decline and fall of Johnny Depp - it intimated he had been trying to make a film out of it for several years now - and it sounded intriguing. It's a quick read, charming, but with a philosophical underpinning that lends it a certain gravitas also. I doubt it would make a very arresting film, however - and Depp is now 20 years too old to play the lead anyway. Well worth the couple of hours it takes to read, though. And, as always, Coverdale's translation is impeccable.
I came across this book in a magazine article on the decline and fall of Johnny Depp - it intimated he had been trying to make a film out of it for several years now - and it sounded intriguing. It's a quick read, charming, but with a philosophical underpinning that lends it a certain gravitas also. I doubt it would make a very arresting film, however - and Depp is now 20 years too old to play the lead anyway. Well worth the couple of hours it takes to read, though. And, as always, Coverdale's translation is impeccable.
February 12, 2015
When I first heard what this book was about, I thought it was a breath of fresh air. The plot is so creative and to be honest, I've never heard a plot like this one. It's a nice quick read so I was able to go through it in one sitting which I enjoyed. If you're looking for action, this isn't your book. I feel as if this book is more on Antoine thoughts and opinions on life, love, and humanity. Yes, it's a little dark and depressing and the story can drag out a bit but my favorite thing about this book are the two main women in this, Clarisse and Mirielle. Clarisse just reminded me of the type of old lady I'd grow up to be and Mireille's decision to spend her last few days away from a hospital is something I believe I would have done, if I was in the same position. My favorite part of the book was the ending, I love how it reflected the beginning of the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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December 9, 2016This was a light weight book, but fun all the same. Antoine, the hero of the piece, decides to enter a senior rest home for the rest of his life. This fatalistic decision leads to a peaceful life and he is accepted by the other residents and staff. He is considered unhinged for accepting such a future.
When a dying women arrives and he forms a unique bond with her a takes a very special trip.
This short book with its black humor is a quick read, that will stay with you as you consider your own destiny.
When a dying women arrives and he forms a unique bond with her a takes a very special trip.
This short book with its black humor is a quick read, that will stay with you as you consider your own destiny.
December 23, 2014
Romaaniks on seda küll naljakas nimetada, ent muidu oli tegu täitsa hea lugemisega. Midagi väga omamoodi, teise nurga alt. Ilma selgete vastuste ja selgete küsimusteta. Kulgemine surma suunas.
October 20, 2020
Kahetsusväärsel kombel ei ole "Õnnelikud päevad" jätnud minusse väga sügavat jälge või mälestust. Üldist sisu mäletan, kuid ei midagi sellist, mis oleks mulle kuidagi eriliselt korda läinud.
See polnud just halb raamat, kuid ka mitte midagi erilist, minu silmis vähemalt. Võib-olla sellepärast, et sisu ei üllatanud ega pakkunud midagi uudset (annan endale täiesti aru, et paljude inimeste meelest võib see ehk olla täielik friigiraamat- surma ja vanaduse eitajate ehk siis enamiku jaoks).
Ma ei pannud üldse imeks, et umbes minuvanune noormees läks vanadekodusse elama- täiesti mõistlik samm mu meelest, kui seda endale lubada saad. Tema suhtumine vanuritesse ei olnud küll alati päris tore, olles pigem omakasupüüdlik. Kuigi, ega tegelikult miski pole kunagi pelgalt must-valge.
Leidus ka huumorit ja irooniat, iroonilist huumorit (nt mulle meeldis väljend sportlik-depressiivne sõidustiil). Aga ikkagi, ei mingit sügavat muljet nüüd tagantjärele.
Teatavasti ostis Johhny Depp raamatukese filmiõigused. Pean seoses sellega tõdema, et ta sobiks tõepoolest suurepäraselt Antoine'i rolli.
See polnud just halb raamat, kuid ka mitte midagi erilist, minu silmis vähemalt. Võib-olla sellepärast, et sisu ei üllatanud ega pakkunud midagi uudset (annan endale täiesti aru, et paljude inimeste meelest võib see ehk olla täielik friigiraamat- surma ja vanaduse eitajate ehk siis enamiku jaoks).
Ma ei pannud üldse imeks, et umbes minuvanune noormees läks vanadekodusse elama- täiesti mõistlik samm mu meelest, kui seda endale lubada saad. Tema suhtumine vanuritesse ei olnud küll alati päris tore, olles pigem omakasupüüdlik. Kuigi, ega tegelikult miski pole kunagi pelgalt must-valge.
Leidus ka huumorit ja irooniat, iroonilist huumorit (nt mulle meeldis väljend sportlik-depressiivne sõidustiil). Aga ikkagi, ei mingit sügavat muljet nüüd tagantjärele.
Teatavasti ostis Johhny Depp raamatukese filmiõigused. Pean seoses sellega tõdema, et ta sobiks tõepoolest suurepäraselt Antoine'i rolli.
July 17, 2018
Leí la versión en español de Tamara Gil Somoza. Se supone que uno debe analizar y comentar una obra sobre lo que existe, sobre lo que es, y no sobre lo que pudo ser. Sin embargo, como este espacio es mío, considero que puedo opinar como se me antoje, saltándome las reglas cuando me apetezca. Siendo así, creo que esta novela pudo ser buena y mereció ser reescrita una vez que el narrador descubrió qué era lo que realmente quería contar. Entiendo que lo descubrió en la página 47, muy avanzado para un texto de 60 páginas, y le dio una inmensa flojera empezar de nuevo. Lástima, realmente creo que pudo ser buena.
June 16, 2025
Es una novela distinta, quizás me esperaba otra cosa? No lo sé... no considero que sea una novela imprescindible, pero toparme con ella tampoco creo que haya sido negativo...
Para mí, lo más importante de la novela y lo que más valor le da es la importancia que da a las personas de tercer edad, y el retrato que hace de estas personas, que podrían ser sin lugar a dudas NUESTROS MAYORES. Es como un homenaje...
Me ha gustado? Si. Recomendarlo? Bueno, para un momento de desconexión y dejar de lado otras lecturas, quizás si.
Ha sido un descubrimiento bonito 🥰
Para mí, lo más importante de la novela y lo que más valor le da es la importancia que da a las personas de tercer edad, y el retrato que hace de estas personas, que podrían ser sin lugar a dudas NUESTROS MAYORES. Es como un homenaje...
Me ha gustado? Si. Recomendarlo? Bueno, para un momento de desconexión y dejar de lado otras lecturas, quizás si.
Ha sido un descubrimiento bonito 🥰
February 21, 2019
2.5 stars.
I agree with a previous review: the best things about this book are that it is short and that I didn't pay for it (I checked it out from the library).
I couldn't sympathize with Antoine, the protagonist who (spoiler alert) left his wife and children to live in a retirement home at the age of 35. In my opinion, this is one of those books that left me wondering. "why was this written/published?"
Not recommended.
I agree with a previous review: the best things about this book are that it is short and that I didn't pay for it (I checked it out from the library).
I couldn't sympathize with Antoine, the protagonist who (spoiler alert) left his wife and children to live in a retirement home at the age of 35. In my opinion, this is one of those books that left me wondering. "why was this written/published?"
Not recommended.
February 5, 2022
Una idea interesante; un sujeto que decide jubilarse a los 35 años e internarse en una casa de retiro de adultos mayores. El contenido de la historia; aburrido.... ni las reflexiones sobre la vida y la muerte, ni la neurosis de este personaje bastante patético, ni la forma en que esta narrado ni los hechos que van pasando. Todo bastante malo, salvo que es bien cortito y pronto se termina.
October 5, 2020
I’ve never got up early and started and finished a book before dawn. And this is a lovely little pre-dawn tale for a bloke on the edge of 50 to read. It made me want to chill a little about mortality and smell the roses.
April 25, 2022
This is an interesting premise and I enjoyed the older people in the nursing home, with the endearing eccentricities. But Antoine was painfully unlikeable and not interesting enough to make up for it, and perhaps this is lost in translation but the book lacked the gravitas for the subject matter.
July 25, 2018
Di facile lettura, storia ironica e molto originale sul senso della vita
March 16, 2019
Veetlevalt küüniline lugu noorest mehest, kes otsustab elada vanadekodus. Intrigeeriv mõtisklus elust ja surmast.
November 17, 2019
Nice plot, somewhat outlandish
November 24, 2020
Wzruszająca historia o śmierci 💁♀️
February 10, 2024
Kort boekje, soms wat confronterend, soms een beetje triest, maar vaak ook grappig en best ook wel een doordenker. Geen grote literatuur maar de moeite waard.
March 11, 2017
The magazine Marie-Claire said, "It's not a long book, but it takes you far." In fact, Happy Days, though really a novella more than a novel, won the french Prix Millepages.
I think there are two saving graces to Happy Days: 1) it's short; and 2) I didn't pay for the book. I will feel no guilt at leaving this behind in my room in South Africa for some other desperate person to come across and read (hey, at least it's not Dan Brown!)
Happy Days is the story of a 36-year-old man named Antione who, after coming into a large inheritance, moves into a retirement community and waits to die. Most of the first half of the book is told in various short vignettes about the nursing home, with much longer portions of existential ramblings about the meaning of life and death. Halfway through the book, he meets Mireille, a cancer patient who is about to die. He embarks on a "science experiement" to watch the way that death claims a person. Predictably, in the end, in witnessing death, Antione learns to love life.
Much of this book reads as if a high-school student wrote it. Certainly, the prose is past the ability of most high school students, but the melodrama is not. This passage exemplifies the somewhat juvenile nature of the writing:
But I am forced to acknowledge that I do not have the talen of Moses; the sea does not open before me, and the horizon still remains blurry, distant, and closed to me, even as the windsurfer now hurls himself out to meet it, riding the waves full speed ahead .... Good luck!
I found this book to be generally tedious, and I wouldn't recommend it. There are only two reasons I am giving it a fair rating, as opposed to a poor rating: I consider Dan Brown to be my standard for the "poor" rating, and this isn't even close to that - though, Dan Brown has more engaging plots even if they are all the same; and I did find one analogy that I liked.
... Wreaths of cigarette smoke drape themselves like B-girls around the necks of the smooth talkers [in bars:].
And that's really the best I can say of it.
I think there are two saving graces to Happy Days: 1) it's short; and 2) I didn't pay for the book. I will feel no guilt at leaving this behind in my room in South Africa for some other desperate person to come across and read (hey, at least it's not Dan Brown!)
Happy Days is the story of a 36-year-old man named Antione who, after coming into a large inheritance, moves into a retirement community and waits to die. Most of the first half of the book is told in various short vignettes about the nursing home, with much longer portions of existential ramblings about the meaning of life and death. Halfway through the book, he meets Mireille, a cancer patient who is about to die. He embarks on a "science experiement" to watch the way that death claims a person. Predictably, in the end, in witnessing death, Antione learns to love life.
Much of this book reads as if a high-school student wrote it. Certainly, the prose is past the ability of most high school students, but the melodrama is not. This passage exemplifies the somewhat juvenile nature of the writing:
But I am forced to acknowledge that I do not have the talen of Moses; the sea does not open before me, and the horizon still remains blurry, distant, and closed to me, even as the windsurfer now hurls himself out to meet it, riding the waves full speed ahead .... Good luck!
I found this book to be generally tedious, and I wouldn't recommend it. There are only two reasons I am giving it a fair rating, as opposed to a poor rating: I consider Dan Brown to be my standard for the "poor" rating, and this isn't even close to that - though, Dan Brown has more engaging plots even if they are all the same; and I did find one analogy that I liked.
... Wreaths of cigarette smoke drape themselves like B-girls around the necks of the smooth talkers [in bars:].
And that's really the best I can say of it.
August 22, 2013
Sul retro del libro si legge:
“Lo sfaccettato eroe di Graff suscita ombre e luce, e riverberi di emozioni; una prosa magnifica illumina questa commedia nera francese, intensa e acutissima”. Publishers Weekly
Forse sono insensibile, o poco acuta, o forse non ho capito il vero senso della storia, ma io ho trovato questo libro assolutamente inutile.
L’unico “riverbero di emozione” degno di essere ricordato e che mi ha quantomeno coinvolto emotivamente è la descrizione della panchina che riporto per intero:
“Mi sono sempre piaciute le panchine. Sono l’immagine di un distacco, il luogo di una presa di distanza, di una tranquilla emarginazione sull’orlo del mondo. Rappresentano un punto d’osservazione privilegiato, un rifugio pronto, uno slargo a lato del sentiero per coloro che sanno fermarsi. Sulle panchine ho trascorso lunghe ore contemplando il mondo. Ce ne sono di meravigliose, incongrue, fortemente improbabili, in posizioni rivelatrici. Un uomo su una panchina non appartiene più alla realtà, o se ne distacca. Quel semplice scarto gli conferisce lo status di poeta e gli offre una visione allargata. Se c’è un luogo che sfugge alla tormenta, questo è la panchina”.
“Lo sfaccettato eroe di Graff suscita ombre e luce, e riverberi di emozioni; una prosa magnifica illumina questa commedia nera francese, intensa e acutissima”. Publishers Weekly
Forse sono insensibile, o poco acuta, o forse non ho capito il vero senso della storia, ma io ho trovato questo libro assolutamente inutile.
L’unico “riverbero di emozione” degno di essere ricordato e che mi ha quantomeno coinvolto emotivamente è la descrizione della panchina che riporto per intero:
“Mi sono sempre piaciute le panchine. Sono l’immagine di un distacco, il luogo di una presa di distanza, di una tranquilla emarginazione sull’orlo del mondo. Rappresentano un punto d’osservazione privilegiato, un rifugio pronto, uno slargo a lato del sentiero per coloro che sanno fermarsi. Sulle panchine ho trascorso lunghe ore contemplando il mondo. Ce ne sono di meravigliose, incongrue, fortemente improbabili, in posizioni rivelatrici. Un uomo su una panchina non appartiene più alla realtà, o se ne distacca. Quel semplice scarto gli conferisce lo status di poeta e gli offre una visione allargata. Se c’è un luogo che sfugge alla tormenta, questo è la panchina”.
January 16, 2011
When I read the synopsis on Barnes & Noble, I kind of expected a funny read that somewhat resembled the documentary Andrew Jenks did of living in a retirement home. As a person who loves World of Jenks and is very excited for retirement home living, I was very excited for the book. It's a very short book, only just over 100 pages, and was translated from it's native French. I think I went into with the wrong frame of mind, expecting a silly look into life in a retirement home through the eyes of a young man. It's a lot more sarcastic and unhappy than I would have thought. I read it quickly, and almost just to get through it. Maybe I need to read it again with more thought, and with a different idea of what it is. Also, this may be one of those books that I'm not quite smart enough to understand just yet. Perhaps I'll try it again in a few years.
June 7, 2011
The basic plot of the story is that the main character Antoine at 18 takes out his college fund and buys a funeral plot and headstone. He has decided he has "experienced everything that constitutes, roughly speaking, the average full life". At 35, he recives a small inheritance and leaves his wife and two children to move into a nursing home essential waiting to die.
This is an ambitious book that deals with finding meaning in your life and allowing yourself to be emotionally open to other people. Unfortunately at 99 pages, it doesn't even begin to touch the surface of those topics. I don't know if it's the translation (the book was originally published in French), or the writing style but I don't think this book succeeds.
Luckily, it was only 99 pages so very little time was wasted.
This is an ambitious book that deals with finding meaning in your life and allowing yourself to be emotionally open to other people. Unfortunately at 99 pages, it doesn't even begin to touch the surface of those topics. I don't know if it's the translation (the book was originally published in French), or the writing style but I don't think this book succeeds.
Luckily, it was only 99 pages so very little time was wasted.
October 23, 2010
Linda Coverdale was responsible for translating this novella from the original French. I'd like to meet her just so I can tell her how brilliant she is! I was overjoyed with sentences like "For this mortifying cynicism is not an end in itself, but a necessary evil in my attempt to fathom what lurks behind our miserable human condition, an anesthesia that allows me to perform open-heart surgery on man and rummage through his guts." Not a particularly cheerful sentence but you can see how well the translation was done - sentences like this are not often found when writing is linguistically secondhand. I'm not sure I would have liked the novella so much if it was not so skillfully presented, but as I received it I very much enjoyed it. It is quiet and endearing in all the right ways.
August 10, 2010
Paint-by-numbers storytelling. This one's concept leads it around by the nose, and most everything feels forced, uninspired. I gave up halfway through. I hoped it might be a little like Jean-Philippe Toussaint's masterly Monsieur--no such luck.
June 23, 2009
A 35 yr old man decides to join the aged at a rest home and live out his days. Odd, silly, and humorous at times but a 2 1/2 rating..
September 20, 2010
I picked it up on a whim. I knew nothing about it, but it seemed interesting. 1 star because I actually finished.
July 9, 2012
An interesting yet often depressing, quick read.
September 8, 2012
Ik vond dit boek heel fijn. vooral het einde.
March 15, 2015
More of a short story, this is a wry and engaging if one-note tale that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews