Benim Mutlu Hayatım

by Lydia Millet, Berrak Göçer (Translator)

Benim Mutlu Hayatım akıl hastalarının kaldığı metruk bir hastanede kilitli bir odada terk edilen isimsiz bir kadının öyküsü. Vaktini anılarını duvarlara yazarak geçiren anlatıcı, benzersiz bakış açısıyla afallatır okuru. En acı olayları anlatırken bile süslü, dolaylı ifadelere sığınmaz, yeri geldiğinde dalgasını da geçer ve gülümsetir onun dünyasına bakanı.

Pulitzer adayı ve PEN Ödülü sahibi yazar Lydia Millet, zalim bir dünyada ne olursa olsun yaşama tutunan isimsiz kahramanının "mutlu" hayatını cesur ve açık sözlü bir üslupla aktararak okuyanda derin bir iz bırakıyor.

"... Evrenin benim göremeyeceğim kadar sonsuzluğa uzadığı kesindi. Evrenin sonunda, her şeyin sonunun ötesinde, hiçliğin ne olacağını hiçbir zaman idrak edemedim. Bu konu beni her zaman aştı. Ama mutlu geçen hayatım boyunca sahip olduğum en güzel fikir, bunu anlamaya çalışmaktı. Evrenin sonu ve yok olmak, her iki durumda sonsuzluk içinde."

"... Altınla resmedilmiş bir kabus... Kelimelerden örülmüş sıcacık bir koza."
-Entertainment Weekly-

"Millet'in hüzünlü ve dokunaklı romanı... olağanüstü bir eser."
-Publishers Weekly-

Genres: Fiction, Mental Health, Novels, Contemporary, Mental Illness, Literary Fiction, Abuse

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2002

About the author

Lydia Millet has written twelve works of fiction. She has won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her books have been longlisted for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and named as New York Times Notable Books. Her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She lives outside Tucson, Arizona.

Reviews

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saying that I really, really loved Lydia Millet’s My Happy Life makes me feel a little bit creepy. There isn’t much happy in the life of our unnamed narrator who talks about her life while being locked up in an asylum that has apparently been abandoned.

Unnamed Narrator has not had it easy. She was found in a shoe box near an orphanage as a baby and spent her childhood bouncing from foster home to orphanage and back again. She’s often homeless and has the hapless luck of ending up in the company of people who want use and abuse her — physically, mentally, and sexually. It’s kind of horrifying, and yet the book is tender and beautiful at the same time.

Read the rest on MN Reads

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 2 out of 5]

Millet parks the comic brio and replaces her exuberant humour with a poetically insane narrator who maintains a sort of aloof optimism throughout the horrific episodes that comprise her “happy” life. The result is a flat and opaque tone that encases the brutal events in an unbelievable literary language (meant to be scrawled on an asylum wall), ramped up to such a degree I was waiting for the comic payoff.

[Bilal Y. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ben deli değilim. Kimi zaman kendimi deliliğin kıyılarında hissetsem de deli olmadığım, beni tanıyan insanların ortak görüşü. Benim Mutlu Hayatım adlı romanı da bir deli anlatıyor, eğer deli taklidi yapan biri değilse. Ama ben deli olduğu konusunda ikna oldum. Evet kahramanımız bir çok kez deli gibi saçmalardan seçmeler sunuyor ama arada bir de olsa önemli tespitlerde bulunuyor tüm diğer deliler gibi: "İnsanların evlenme sebebi bir gözlemciye sahip olabilmektir."

Romanı büyük bir motivasyonla okudum. Dün gece ilk yüz sayfasını okudum, kalan yetmiş sayfasını da yirmi dört saat sonra bitirdim. Bu motivasyonun nedeni üzerinde düşünüyorum. Evet deliler eğlencelidir ama iki gece saatlerce bir deliyi can kulağıyla dinlemek akıl karı değil. Deli miyim, neyim bilmiyorum ki...

[Halley Sutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this four stars because it was extremely effective and created a lot of emotional response in pretty much everyone in my class who read it. I will never feel the need to reread this book although maybe the last three pages. Really beautiful and harrowing and Jesus just WHY WHAT WHY. Effective.

[Rita · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stupid, stupid book. I read the first bunch of pages until I felt blood streaming out of my eyes, and then I flipped to the back fifteen or so pages to see how it ended and was so glad I hadn't wasted any more time with this stupid, stupid book.

[Roberta Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book months ago but this slim spare novel stays in my mind. Totally original. A main character of such innocence, vulnerability, and strength at the same time in an impossibly surreal situation that feels all too true

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly, this short novel has a lot in common with my last fiction read, Wolfgang Hilbig's Old Rendering Plant. Both are very upsetting pictures of horrific worlds limited closely to one young person at different stages of his/her life, told in claustrophobic first-person narration. They are most differentiated by Life’s focus on victimization (of her female narrator) and Life’s irony (the "happy" narrator forgives her victimizers even as they excuse themselves or deny what they have done). Life is not nearly as poetic as Plant, but it has its moments. Both Hilbig and Millet are uncompromising, but Millet’s playfulness allows her to be not entirely consistent, to break rules and see what she can do with the toy she’s wound up. As unpleasant as Life was to read (and there were times I wanted to put it aside) and as repetitious as its view of life is (think "Perils of Pauline"), I’m glad I read it, but I need a break.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost stopped reading this several times. Was it gratuitously violent? Was the author getting off on torturing the narrator? Did I really want to spend my spare time reading about a woman getting raped and mutilated and beaten by various villains throughout her life? Withstanding all of this while never once blaming them for their actions and in fact continuing to consider her life a gift? And then I realized that the book was not only not awful, but it was brilliant and beautiful. Found myself underlining paragraphs brimming with elegant, innocent prose. I realized it was a saint story. Or a fable. Or something else entirely, maybe something along the lines of Lars Von Trier's _Breaking the Waves_, but whatever it was, I was never going to forget it.

[Aviendha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zaten üzüntüm bana hiçbir zaman fazla zarar vermemiştir. Demek istediğim, üzüntünün benliğimi bütünüyle sarmasına izin verirsem bir süre sonra kendimi arınmış hissediyorum.
Üzüntü, yalnızca kaybedilen anların ve fırsatların etrafında yön değiştiren bir rüzgardır. Ben de kaybettiklerimi mutlulukla hatırlıyor ve eskiden var oldukları için memnuniyetle dolup taşıyorum. En azından bir zamanlar var oldukları için.

Küçük bir akıl hastanesi odasından, büyük, acımasız gerçekliklerle dolu bir dünyaya adım atıyoruz. Anlatıcı, bunu en masum ve en sarsıcı şekilde gerçekleştiriyor. Sırça Fanus'u sevdiyseniz bu kitaba şans verin. Fazlasıyla hakediyor.

[Canan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tesadüf eseri Algernon'a çiçekler ve Benim Mutlu Hayatımı arka arkaya okudum ve çok etkilendim. Sanki damağımda paslı bir tat hissettim, ağzım kanıyormuş gibi..
Ufak bir alıntı "Tanıklık edilmemiş bir hayatın tamamen yok olup gittiği konusunda ısrarcıydı. İnsanların evlenme sebebi, dedi, bir gözlemciye sahip olabilmektir."

[Celina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a disturbing book. A woman is locked, abandoned, in a windowless room in a shuttered psychiatric hospital, waiting for a wrecking ball to come release her. While she waits she writes the story of her life on the walls. It has not been what anyone else would call a happy life, more like a long series of horrific incidents of abuse and exploitation, real and probably imagined. Yet she finds beauty and goodness in all of it. With her awkward, self-taught writing style and her dogged determination to see the best in everyone and every situation, she is a kind of holy innocent. At times her pure benevolence annoyed me (which told me something about myself). At others she reminded me of Candide, finding all for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

The hardest thing for me about reading this book was the narrator’s voice, a mix of damage, intelligence, big words learned from books, and a disconnection from reality. I was impressed with the creepiness of it but I had a hard time placing it in any of my personal experience of people with schizophrenia, autism, or other conditions. That's the main reason why I didn’t rate this book higher.

[☕Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 5
Plot: 5
Characters: 5
Emotional impact: 4
Overall rating: 4.75

[Paul Dickerson]

Somehow both incredibly disturbing and beaming with heart. Lydia's most lyric novel.

[Nima Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing

[Megan Maradiago · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am so torn on this book. Is it beautifully written? Yes. Does it make me think and question my life's decisions as well as the world's? Yes.
I think it hit too close to home and was just too realistic and dark for me. I work in the most amazing place with adults that have IDD and D/S. The fact that the main character is so realistic, and the events are so plausible made me sick. So again, I am not sure how to rate this especially since for my sanity, I had to stop reading it.

[Em Milling · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a spectacular piece of contemporary fiction. I don't think I've ever encountered such eloquent yet simplistic writing. Millet weaves the narrative of her protagonist with so much care that the reader is instantly engrossed in her horrific yet wonderful life.

The story features a young woman who is dragged mercilessly through life by a number of wretched people. She never knows her parents and begins her life in the foster care system, somewhere in the southern U.S. There she is repeatedly beaten by a playmate, and struck by lightning. She knows that she is "stupid" and makes constant apologies for being an inconvenience. The way she explains herself to the reader is so unique - While I feel that I should pity her situation I can't, because she explains that she loves to be around people, and they don't know that they're hurting her because they don't know their own strength. She just lets people do what they will with her. She is extremely resourceful and lives on her own for quite a while, and I marvelled at her spirit. Something tells me though that her spirit would never be broken because she just doesn't understand social "rules" due to her mental illness which is revealed towards the end of the book.

The book is told in first person, it moves easily forward, and the language is beautiful. Her feelings and experiences are described in such a poetic way that it clues the reader into the fact that "insane" people are capable of being human - although she is frequently dehumanized by her peers, doctors and abusers.

Well worth the read!

[Vel Veeter]

Lydia Millet wrote one of my top choices for the Longlist for the National Book Award, The Sweet Lamb of God, and I liked it a lot, but it has, what I consider, one of the lowest and inexplicably lowest ratings on Goodreads. That doesn’t deter me. Instead, it sort of suggests a kind of specialness I felt with it.

This novel had some version of that too, though I didn’t like this one nearly as much as I liked that one.

In this novel, our protagonist sits in a hospital that is deeply depressing and gross and fraught and tells of her life story.

Taking only 150 pages to do so, the story involves arrest for assault, the loss of a baby, a shipwreck (I think) and several other various, and serious, toils that lead her to this cell of a room.

What differentiates her from other stories like this, is that, through it all, she maintains a rather special and cheery disposition.

This a weird novel. The narrator feels simple, and in many ways she is. But, she never feels false or unrendered or placating, or rather, it doesn’t seem like the book condescends to her more or less overly simple way of life. It doesn’t celebrate it exactly either.

In a way, it reminds me of Charlize Theron’s character from Arrested Development: absolutely a manic pixie dream girl, but one that has to exist in the real world where there are physical and emotional consequences for the fractured and fragile way of life you live.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am so torn on how to rate this book. First of all, it was recommended to me by someone I greatly admire, so I have to acknowledge how much sway their opinion has on me. That being said, I did love the style. I love Millet's use of language and the insights the narrator had as they went through their very much not happy life. But that being said, I didn't actually like the plot so much. It felt a bit like someone's dark fantasy that had very little basis in reality (which also drew my attention right back to the author when I was previously caught up in the story). Now, the narrator certainly was quite detached from reality, so I was willing to accept that maybe a lot of this happened in her head, but I didn't see concrete evidence that that was the case. In other words, to make this book work for me, I had to take liberties that felt a bit forceful, and I don't like to do that.

Anyway, loved the style, but not so much the story, which is an interesting position to be left in at the close of a novel.

[Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the saddest books I’ve read, told in this simpleton-child’s view which sees nothing wrong with any part of the world she lives in relentless nightmare of abuse, rape, being locked up, and the various wrappings of "kindnesses" the world pretends are effective.
At the beginning, this sentence. “Aloneness is only a ghost seeping through cracks.” She sews herself up with the company of memories and dreams and soon, the reader understands that she lives in some out-of-time-ness, unconnected to anything we might consider normal. Imagine for a minute everything you might dread, fear, despise. Remove any prejudice about anything.

My imagination leaps to Prometheus chained, having his liver ripped out of him, not just daily, but constantly. Ah. The liver must have a reason for being wanted by that eagle. The blood swirls in patterns to color the water trapped into pockets under the ice.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

May 7: I re-read this since I seemed to enjoy it so much in 2007 but didn't remember anything about it. Not sure why I liked it so much the first time. It's an easy enough read but I found it hard to believe a simpleton could be so naive about some things while understanding other things. I'd only give it 2 stars this time around, but figured on 3 since I gave it 5 the first time.


Such a different set of eyes to see the world through. As horrible as her life seemed to me, she made me understand how she was able to see her life in a semi-positive way. The main character is obviously mentally ill, although how much of that is due to her own nature versus her experiences in life is not clear. Her story is heart breaking, but I will always be glad to have experienced the world through her eyes.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Millet's slender novel tells the story of a cognitively deficient woman who is perpetually subjected to "the kindness of the state," from her shoebox abandonment as an infant to her solitary confinement (and assumed demise) in a deserted mental institution. The unnamed narrator exists solely within the cracks of an overburdened, calloused system of social services. Essentially we are shown life in the cracks, but without the tinges (or saturation) of bitterness and despair one might expect from such a narrative. The language is guileless, graceful, and mild, and this reader can appreciate how artfully the prose was crafted. While the benighted narrator seems "incapable of perceiving slight or injury," the pathos of her story serves as a tacit censure of an inadequate methodology for aiding "the less fortunate" among us.

Nonetheless, two stars. It was decent read.

[Schuyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting read. Luckily it was short. I loved Millet's Oh Pure & Radiant Heart, and I will certainly read more of her novels, but this one fell a little flat for me. I think this might have worked better as a short story. As a novel it was a bit like butter spread over too much bread. Or maybe a cob of corn, because I've been eating a lot of August sweet corn, and man, I hate it when I hit a row of kernels that aren't buttered. And that's about as long as I want to make this review.

[Phil Miletic · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, beautiful, beautiful book. Poetic, sparse prose that says so goddamn much. No, the narrator's life isn't so happy as she says it is. But the book is about (to peg one thing) finding that happiness in such a shitty world, even when the worst is happening to you; to be able to take the walls of confinement and make those walls not walls, transparent, permeable. And and and that when we are at our loneliest, we are not alone. This has become one of my favourite books and I plan to read much more Millet

[Engin Türkgeldi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Büyük bir hayalkırıklığı. Zeka özürlü bir kahramanın gözünden dünyaya eleştirel bakış atma fikrini kullanan ve bunu başarıyla gerçekleştiren diğer kitapların ('Nasıl mısın iyi misin?' veya 'Flowers for Algernon' gibi) yanında çok sönük ve yetersiz. Anlatım, konu, içerik veya kurgu olarak hiçbir özelliği olmayan, sıkıcı bir kitap.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book gave me headaches and put me in a bad mood. No it's not written poorly, no it's not that its not a good book. It's a book about a girl who has a hard life or rather her life is a nightmare.
I see red whenever I hear or see a woman who's been hurt by a man, thus this book caused me emotional pain. I didn't enjoy it.

[Dar Gareau-levy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this book. I felt so awful reading about this woman's suffering, and felt somewhat manipulated by the premise that she could find grace and beauty in the horrors she lived. Part of me understand that these things can be found anywhere, but there is something very frightening about the idea that we can, or should look for it it in such degradation and abusive situations.

[Elaine Torrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thia is the story of a nameless woman abandoned in a locked and soon to be torn down hospital for the mentally ill. I don't know if I didn't like it so much because of the subject matter or what. The main character is so beat on by almost everyone in her life. It just was too much.

[tish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lydia Millet's third novel is spare and haunting, and the writing is so beautiful that the unbearable events of the narrator's life are made readable. Totally recommended!

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book.

[Eren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seçerken beklentimi fazla yüksek tutmayıp, okuduktan sonra "İyi ki okumuşum." dedirten bir kitapla daha buluşmanın haklı sevincini yaşıyorum. Ne kitabı ne de yazarı daha önce duydum fakat kitabın arka kapak yazısı beni kendine birazcık çekti ve kütüphane kitaplıklarının arasında "Ne okusam?" diye gezinirken can havliyle bu kitabı seçtim.
Benim Mutlu Hayatım, aslında adından çok farklı şeyler taşıyan bir kitap. Kitapta o kadar hüzünlü şey oluyor ki, yazar bu adı ironik düşünerek vermiş kitaba. Kitabımızın baş karakteri, akıl hastanesinde yatan bir kadın. Tüm hayatı dört duvar arasında geçen bu kadının acı hatıralarını okuyoruz kitap boyunca. Çocukluğunda yetimhanede büyümesi, daha sonra koruyucu ailelere verilmesi, çeşitli evlerde hizmetkarlık yapması hatta sokaklarda ve parklarda yatarak ömrünü geçirmesi gibi bir çok şeye tanıklık ediyoruz. Karakterimiz o kadar saf ve temiz kalpli biri ki, insanların ona yaptığı bir çok kötülüğü anlamıyor ve hepsinin altında neredeyse onları haklı bulacak şeyler söylüyor. Çok acı şeyler yaşıyor, ben okurken karakter adına çok üzüldüm ve maalesef bu tarz insanlar hala dünyada yaşadığı için ayrıca lanet okudum. Karakter bu olayları o kadar naif ve saf anlatıyor ki, hiç bilmesek sanki bu yaşanılanlar kötü değil de iyi şeylermiş gibi algılayabiliriz. Çoğu yerde kitabın içine girip olanlara müdahale etmek istedim kitabı okurken.
Gerçekten konusu itibariyle çok da farklı olmayan bu kitap, yazarın anlatım tarzıyla yükseliyor. Yazar, karakterin gözünden o kadar güzel anlatmış ki, sanki gerçekten yazarın başından geçmiş şeylermiş gibi hissettim kitabı okurken. Akıl hastası bir karakterin başına gelen şeyleri ve karakterin hislerini bu kadar güzel ve gerçekçi anlattığı için yazarı gerçekten çok takdir ettim. Kitabı okurken hiç sıkılmadım, kitap gerçekten çok sürükleyici ve kalp kırıcıydı. Bu kadar yaşanan k��tü şeyden sonra daha ne kadar kötü şey olabilir diye düşünürken daha farklı şeylerle karşılaşmak da daha kötü hissettirdi beni. Kitapla ilgili sevmediğim tek şey; kitabın son kısımları biraz aceleye gelmiş gibiydi. Sanki biraz daha anlatsaymış yazar, daha güzel olabilirmiş zira kitabın tadı damağımda kaldı. O kadar naif ve ürkek bir kitaptı ki gerçekten çok kalbimi kırdı. Sonunun bir şeylere bağlanabilir olmasını bekledim ama öylece bitip gitti kitap.
Gerçekten farklı bir şeyler okumak isterseniz önerebileceğim bir kitaptı. Empati gücünüzü oldukça zorlayan, çok iç burkan ama okurken de sizi çok sürükleyen güzel bir psikolojik dram kitabıydı.