Doubleday Happiness and Love.

by Zoe Dubno

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 stand for everything she detests—Happiness and Love is a piercing debut novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.

Years after escaping New York and the center of its artistic world—a group of self-important, depraved, and unscrupulous artists, curators, and hangers-on—our narrator is back in town. With no plans to see anyone she once knew, she’s wandering around the Lower East Side, thinking about the recent death of her former best friend, Rebecca, when she runs into Eugene, one half of the artist-curator couple at the heart of her old social set. Despite her better judgement, she accepts his invitation to a dinner party. And though the party is held only hours after Rebecca’s funeral, it not a memorial of Rebecca but a dinner held in honor of a young, newly famous actress whose lateness delays the party by hours.

As the guests sip their natural wine and await the actress’s arrival, the narrator, from her perch on the corner seat of a white sofa, silently, systematically, and mercilessly eviscerates them—their manners, their relationships, their delusions and failures, and the complete moral poverty that brings them here, to Nicole and Eugene’s loft on the Bowery. 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.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Art, Humor, New York, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 22, 2025

Reviews

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

my two favorite things to read about...

but not my favorite way to read about them.

https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...

this had a lot of interesting thoughts it said 900 times in between extremely uninteresting ones until even the interesting wasn't interesting anymore.

if i write the word interesting one more time it's not going to look like a word. interesting. see?

this is both my genuine thought and a test, because if i'm getting on your nerves you definitely won't be able to make it through this novel.

even a very small (and square, for some reason) book can manage to grind your gears without chapter or page or paragraph breaks.

this was trying very hard and sometimes succeeding, in between factual inaccuracies and minor errors and big stylistic swings that missed the mark.

i liked the dialogue at the end, then i didn't. i liked the ending, and then i REALLY didn't. i liked our protagonist in fits and starts. i couldn't decide whether this book was incisive and clever or just hateful and annoying.

maybe that last part at least was the point.

bottom line: this is a self-aware hard read — but that is still a hard read.

(thanks to the publisher for the arc)

[MagretFume · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is absolutely brutal. 
All the narrative happens inside the protagonist head during a single night, as she attends a dîner party after her estranged friend's funeral. 
All her thoughts are pure vitriol. 

I loved the talent of the protagonist to dissect the worst flaws of the people around her, to the point of cruelty, and as her thoughts unravelled, her own hypocrisy became more and more difficult to stand. 

It is definitely a very original and impactful read. 
I think the writing is great. It is very raw, and has interesting even somehow funny moments but honestly it was a tough read and I'm glad it was short one, I'm not sure I could have stomach more of it.

[Zoe Dubno · Rating 5 out of 5]

my goodreads policy is to give every book 5 stars so i had to... give my own book 5 stars 🐒

[Ceecee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up

The narrator, who is a writer, is finally back in New York, a city she has spent several years avoiding as well as the former friends that inhabit it. She has no plans to see anyone but one morning while pacing up and down the Bowery and surrounding streets, she bumps into Eugene. She doesn’t tell him she returned weeks ago, she doesn’t tell him she has no plans to reconnect with anyone from her old life, instead she tells him she’s only just returned. He invites her to attend a little dinner next evening to be held in honour of an actress she’s never heard of. He informs her of her friend Rebecca‘s death, a fact she already knows but gives him the satisfaction of being the one to break the awful news. Against her better judgement she accepts and on the night in question she watches all this arty crowd from the corner whilst systematically destroying them in her head. They all believe they’re clever and original thinkers, but they’re superior as well as stylish and artistic but with the benefit of the previous distance from them, she sees them for what they really are and berates herself for attending. Eventually, the “star of the show” arrives and we’re a hairs breath away from the wheels of the evening crashing off the tracks and reaching a finale of deliciously delivered truths, accompanied by a divine meal and fine wines.

This is not an easy read by any means as there are streams and streams of consciousness, no paragraphs, no chapters et cetera just pages and pages of internal thoughts which are often vicious and vitriolic but frequently entertaining. It’s very smart, astute and acutely observed and so I cannot deny that it is anything but very well written. It conveys her life, that of Rebecca, Eugene and his partner Nicole and writer Alexander in such a way that it enables us to see their lives for what they are as she destroys their pretensions and intellectual pretentiousness. In all honesty, I’m not sure at times exactly what the narrator is talking about but I definitely get the gist. However, it’s worth sticking with it for the take down which is incisive, cutting, destructive, brutal and bang on point. These are not likeable people and so richly deserve it! A round of applause please!

The ending is fantastic as she wishes all happiness and love with bouts of something else!! So good.

Apparently this is based on Thomas Bernhard’s The Woodcutter which is referenced several times but since I’ve not read it, it means nothing to me.

Overall, it’s very different and if you can get past the style it’s written in, it’s well worth reading.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Penguin Random House, Transworld/Doubleday for the much appreciated early copy in return for an honest review.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

The opening lines of Zoe Dubno's brilliant debut novel Happiness and Love immediately grabbed me:

'While everyone was waiting for the actress to arrive from her premiere, I sat in the corner seat of the white linen sofa at Eugene's with my legs crossed, watching the rest of the party and regretting my decision to attend. I was surrounded by the very people that I had spent the last five years avoiding, people who had taken advantage of the death of our friend Rebecca to drag me back into their cathedral of modernist rococo on the Bowery.'

Which the reader, or at least this reader, immediately realises is a very deliberate take on Thomas Bernhard's The Woodcutters, in David McLintock's translation:

'While everyone was waiting for the actor, who had promised to join the dinner party in the Gentzgasse after the premiere of The Wild Duck, I observed the Auersbergers carefully from the same wing chair I had sat in nearly every day during the fifties, reflecting that it had been a grave mistake to accept their invitation. I had not seen the couple for twenty years, and then, on the very day that our mutual friend Joana had died, I had met them by chance in the Graben, and without further ado I had accepted their invitation to this artistic dinner, as they described the supper they were giving. For twenty years I had not wanted to know anything about the Auersbergers; for twenty years I had not seen the Auersbergers, and in these twenty years the very mention of the name Auersberger had brought on third-degree nausea, I thought, sitting in the wing chair.’

Yes this is the Woodcutters transported from 1970s Vienna to 2020s New York. The unnamed female (male) narrator has returned from London to New York (Vienna) after some years away, first to learn of the death of a friend Rebecca (Joana) through a drug overdose (suicide) and then, on the Bowery (Graben) bumps into some formerly incredibly close acquaintances Eugene and Nicole (the Auersbergers) who they have not seen and indeed actively avoided for five (twenty) years, and are invited to an artistic dinner party that evening by the sexually predatory couple, where the guest of honour will be a famous actress (actor) coming from their premiere, and the death of their mutual friend honoured only perfomatively. The narrator sits in a corner sofa (wing chair) analysing the other guests, more than interacting with them, ripping their artistic pretentions to pieces, although not without some fondness.

Happiness and Love however can be read, indeed perhaps deserves to be read, in its own right and as a stand-alone work, and, the initial set-up aside, is not a rewrite, so I will drop the parallels from my review from this point (although note some Bernhardian language). I would urge people to read Happiness and Love and The Woodcutters but only because they are both great novels.

(hopefully also the characters here are, unlike Bernhard's, entirely fictional and the book won't end up in lawsuits!)

This is one of those novels where I highlighted half the book on my Kindle copy, so a few favourite quotes to give a flavour:

An extended piece on the different way an artist who is the child of a great artist can deal with the situation, all of which inevitably lead to failure in one way or another, ends (Nestbeschmutzer of course a term often applied to Bernhard himself for his acerbic takes on his native Austria):

'But perhaps the most difficult option for the child of the great artist is to become a Nestbeschmutzer and innovate past the work of their father or in reaction against it, inevitably ensuring that they will suffer the fate of usurping their beloved parent, which will likely haunt them until the end of their lives or estrange them from their parent forever.'

When the rich hostess Nicole seems more concerned that the narrator has the correct pronunciation of an artist whose work she owns, rather than show her and discuss the work itself:

'In this way the rich, through their ownership of art, not only soil the piece for themselves, by adding it to their hoard and reducing the work of art to an object like a clock radio, but also ruin it for all who attempt to enjoy the piece because they so often believe that they, the owners, are the sole authority on the work, the only ones who can truly understand it. They believe that by purchasing the work, that in exchange for handing over the cash, they receive from the artist not only the piece but also the key to what it means, but of course they never do understand the work, they are the people that understand the work least in the world, they are the destroyers of the work. And though there are so many ways that the rich can destroy the art that they buy—licensing it to fashion brands and tech ads, cluttering their walls to create a disgusting mismatched gallery of their hoard —Nicole had destroyed her collection in the worst way, the way that rich people with good taste and with artist friends destroy their purchases. In a rapture of cognitive dissonance they love great art but derive great shame trom hoarding artwork, they are embarrassed by their riches so they lock their art away in storage so that their addiction to accumulation-and, more importantly, their taste— can never be commented on.'

Talking about the sort of shallow art the host Eugene produces (and sadly I'll admit to some sympathy with the public in this quote):

'It was written up as a blockbuster show of contemporary art, and the show really was packed, and I noticed that the public would read the wall text before looking at the piece. They'd enter the gallery and look directly at the wall text and then they'd cast a passing glance at the piece itself-and who could blame them, I mean the pieces were hardly visually interesting, they were hardly arresting, they were hardly even beautiful-and then, having read the wall text they'd think I understand the piece completely, they'd nod their head, ah yes, this reptile terrarium filled with mercury is of course about the contamination of our oceans, as I've just learned on the wall text, and they'd check off a mental box, the artist had done what she'd promised, and they'd move on to the next one and do the same, and they'd leave the room feeling like they had gone and seen some culture that they had really understood for once, they'd understood the point the artist was trying to make because it was right there to read on the wall text, and of course it made sense. It was an idea, an idea about a world problem, about the artist's identity, and why couldn't everything be like this, they thought—why did the things they saw in the modern art museum have to make such little sense?'

One of the minor guests:

'I actually heard one of the guests—a conceptual artist who always had flowers in her hair and who I had always found incredibly stupid and annoying and, last I saw her, five years ago, was always bringing her baby to parties and art openings tied to her in an imperfectly dyed cotton sling, and she would tell people that she had brought the baby because indigenous mothers (indigenous to where, she never said) never parted from their babies for the first year, that the increased skin-to-skin contact taught the babies crucial self-nurturing skills for later in life, but really I'm not sure that a loft full of cigarette smoke and cocaine-fueled debates about post-internet aesthetics was what the indigenous mothers had in mind when they came up with this parenting style—I heard this conceptual artist, for once sans bébé, say to Nicole at the door when she'd arrived, she would have wanted us to have a nice time. She would have wanted us to celebrate the arts. It was nice there would be an actor coming because she would have wanted us to celebrate drama, she said to Nicole.'

One of the other guests, Alexander, an American author comes in for particular opprobrium. He is an author of novels of a certain type, having failed to have his far more interesting experimental first novel published, a man who refuses to read novels in translation. [I do worry this quote may though harm the book's Booker Prize chances given it features a judge!]:

'Alexander had talked freely about his first novel with me and with most anyone at the loft on the Bowery, elaborating on its literary interventions, its stylistic experiments, but after this book project was rejected by every major publisher, he rarely spoke again about what he was writing about, or even what he was thinking about, even after his next novel was widely celebrated as the new great thing, even as he was poised to become the new Franzen— an apt description I thought, because his writing was just as solipsistic, self-congratulatory, and mediocre as Franzen’s, although it was sexier, perhaps because Alexander had the experience of having once been a very good-looking man and Franzen had not. But even as Alexander’s debut novel, which was in fact his second though we weren’t allowed to mention that, was widely celebrated, he refused to discuss literature, or even ideas, beyond the fact that he had met Andrew Wylie for coffee or that he had sat next to Sarah Jessica Parker at the PEN/Faulkner Award or that he had gone with Ben Lerner to pick out a new armchair and wound up with this hideous brown chenille wing chair, he had said once when I went over to his apartment, if it weren’t for Ben Lerner I would have never bought this hideous wing chair.'

The wing-chair a nice nod to The Woodcutters. The narrator realises she should have realised Alexander's character from when she first met him (and I'm with her on this incredibly annoying habit of strangers) albeit as she admits there was some self-depreciating humounr in Alexander's approach to her at a gallery:

'It is only the worst people in the world who tell you that your shoelace is untied, the most intrusive, condescending people who let you know that your shoelace is untied. They have some kind of perverse desire to invade your personal space to inform you that you've been incapable of doing the simplest thing, and they alert you as though they are truly worried for your personal safety-that by leaving your shoe untied you are opening yourself up to the most severe bodily harm, and that they, by warning you of something that doubtlessly you're able to see, are absolute saints of the highest order, when in reality you've left your shoe untied because once it's dragged around on the dirty floor for long enough, you're well aware it's come undone but why on earth would you want to touch the muddy shoelace and tie it, and Alexander pointed at my shoelace, and as I was about to tell him that I knew my shoelace was untied, I looked down and noticed his shoelace was untied too.'

But there is, as mentioned some affection amongst the sarcasm, as she remembers her friends Rebecca, and while the party only confirms she was right to avoid these people for 5 years, her wishes towards them are mixed. As with the Woodcutters she is the last to leave the party, running down the stairs and through the city, but whereas Bernhard's narrator thinks I'll write something at once, no matter what -- I'll write about this artistic dinner, she attributes that sentiment to the author Alexander, and instead concludes:

'I wished for their removal from my life, and I wished a painful bout of syphilis for Eugene, I wished a catastrophic opening for Nicole, I wished for another tepidly reviewed book for Alexander, but I wished them all happiness and love.'

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

Interview with the author: https://www.vogue.com/article/zoe-dub...

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The psychological horror of the nyc art world

[Jillian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may not be a horror story, but its protagonist’s plight is certainly any introvert’s worst nightmare. Our narrator, a writer, is stuck at a dinner party that feels like it will never end, filled with the most insufferable people you can imagine. It’s hosted by old “friends” from New York’s art scene—friends she wishes she never reconnected with. One is Eugene, a middle-aged, nepo-baby artist whose love of creeping on younger women comes second only to his love of name-dropping. His partner, Nicole, is an insecure curator with family money who’s desperate to always be on the cutting edge. Amidst this off-putting scene, the narrator is mourning the very recent death of her friend Rebecca, ostensibly a friend of her fellow partygoers as well. Is she the only one actually grieving?

I loved this book. It is a dark comedy with a lot of heart and a biting wit. Our narrator is just sympathetic enough to feel like the friend you sit in the corner and gossip with at a party. She’s not a moralizer, she just straight up doesn’t like these people. But her moments of reflection on her friendship with Rebecca are emotionally resonant. I learned from the author’s note at the end that this is actually a retelling of Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard, and now I’m dying to pick up that book too. If you’ve ever been at an event and thought “these are SO not my people,” you will find this novel deeply relatable.

Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published September 2, 2025.

3 stars

The unnamed narrator is a woman in her thirties, returned to NYC after some years of self-exile abroad. It’s not clear why she returned, but it is not because of the funeral which, in small part, makes up the subject of the novel which, along with the dinner party after comprises its whole - the entity takes place over a number of hours. During the dinner party the recalls the funeral of her former friend Rebecca, who committed suicide. Now she is grudgingly(?) attending a dinner party given by former friends Eugene and Nicole, with whom she once lived, in their beautiful, moneyed apartment in the Bowery. The dinner is not in honor of Rebecca however, but, rather, is a “cultural evening” given for an actress from California. Alexander, who is also there, who is always at their home, was once the center of her world along with Eugene, Nicole and Rebecca.

That group, along with others, believes they make up the young cultural elite of the city. They go to the important things, they make the things important by being there. The narrator was completely enmeshed in their world, left New York to escape them, but she never really has.

First off, be aware there are no paragraphs in this book, so if that is the sort of affectation that drives you crazy, well, you’ve been warned. Nearly everyone here is an awful person. Yes, pitiful in their way, but not so much that anything is excused. The men are worse than the women, which is a rather pitiful stab at feminism, I guess?

What if the narrator? She left, but her mind never left, and the author uses the actress to attack the group, not the narrator. They are “the ones who believe that their work is more important, more virtuous, different in its very nature to the work people actually enjoy.” I think there are probably groups of big city denizens who will love this book, but I just found it decent, somewhat tedious and repetitive at times.

[jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book would kill those booktok creators who claim they skip paragraphs that are too long and/or solely read a book’s dialogue.

“happiness and love” is an absolutely unflinching portrayal of the upper echelons of the (new york city) art scene with razor-sharp observations on the elitism, the social climbing, and the showmanship of it all. our unnamed narrator spends the 200+ pages of the novel revisiting her experiences surrounding those in the city’s art scene, after returning home to new york from europe to attend her friend’s funeral. while sitting on a sofa in her former patrons’ apartment for a “memorial service” that ends up being anything but, our narrator eviscerates the attendees and their true motives, coming to the realization of how performative those in her past life truly are.

as for its execution, this was difficult to read, and i mean that on a craft level. the entire novel is one continuous paragraph. no chapter breaks, no line breaks, no quotation marks (just italics for dialogue). it was claustrophobic and exhausting. on the one hand, i get it—the narrator is essentially rambling on and on about her experiences as she dissects the scene in front of her and her past, and the exhaustion the thick block of text creates is reflective of how the narrator is feeling. but it also just made it so unnecessarily difficult to read that it felt like a slog to get through at times. and as with all works that utilize the stream-of-consciousness style, some parts would flow well and others would stall. granted, i did find that i found a rhythm around the 55% mark, but i shouldn’t have to force myself through half of a novel to, only then, find my footing with the prose.

my favorite parts were when the narrator reflected on rebecca and her personal experiences with her; and, unfortunately, these bits were outweighed by the class analyses. the narrator continuously brings up how distasteful it is to center a dinner party around an actress’s expected presence while framing it as a memorial service for the deceased rebecca, but most of the novel was a rambling critique of her peers, and rebecca’s person/character fell through the cracks. i always like to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like this, but it almost felt like dubno was trying to balance the two—the narrator’s grief over rebecca’s death and her disdain for the world her and rebecca took part in—but it became less and less rebecca-focused as the book went on, despite rebecca being the catalyst for the narrator’s return to new york in the first place. the narrator also repeatedly points out the issues with the bourgeoisie, but at the same time i don’t think she’s necessarily exempt from that. she does everything she can to separate herself from *them* when, in reality, she lets herself be repeatedly sucked into their world and their lives, as if she has no agency of her own.

it was also really fun to read the actress, who was invited to the memorial-not-memorial as the focal point of the evening, completely annihilate all the attendees. she was a powerhouse! lastly, i appreciated the optimism and the overall sentiment of the ending of the novel, but it felt like a very quick switch from the heaviness that hung within the other 95% of the narrative.

despite some great moments of awareness and eloquent critiques on the rich and the “cultured”, i expected to enjoy this more than i did. while i understand its intention, i think the ~internal monologue with no room for pause~ format really detracted from my reading experience, while still being able to acknowledge what that style was attempting to achieve in the process.

2.5

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

[twoey (rachel q.) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly think this has become a new favorite book of mine. There’s nothing I love more than books that dress down pseudo-intellectual rich people, and this one absolutely delivered. I once again think of the Virginia Woolf quote about how people read fiction like it’s gossip- this book absolutely fits that description.

At first I didn’t know what to make of the structure of the prose, as it is all one continuous paragraph and uses run-on sentences. However, rather than feeling sloppy, this style of writing really allows you to sink deeply into it and take it all in as it bombards you with absolute insanity.

A very fun read, I’d recommend it to anyone who has been a part of the art world in any capacity.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Ed Curtin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book! Biting, witty, and fun. I also hate speaking to artists. She’s just like me fr

[Celine Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

really, really loved this and Dubno ventriloquizes Thomas Bernhard’s voice so well! (it’s explicitly inspired by Bernhard’s Woodcutters)

the searing cynicism and disgust with the superficialities of society, of course—but she also gets at the genuine humanism (and the sincere belief in art and love!!) that, to me, is covertly the best part of Bernhard

[Ciara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unquestionably the best book I’ve read all year. If I’m being honest, I think a lot of the negative ARC reviews are from readers who were never the intended audience for this book. I’ve known every single one of these characters and I’ve been trapped, narrating elaborate thoughts to myself in my head, in social settings just like this.

[Elizabeth Tuttle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ambitious, stream-of-consciousness debut, Happiness and Love updates Bernhard's Woodcutters for the modern age, in which the self-proclaimed cultural elite are primarily successful in fulfilling their own egoistic need for indulgence.

Our narrator finds herself at an excruciating dinner party with these former friends, with the entire duration of the novel taking place in a single scene. It is clear our narrator herself has a distaste for the general milieu but is still working out the specificities of her own thought as we trace some of the contradictions and development of her internal, misanthropic reflections. The narrator is worthy of criticism herself, as her critical distance from these insufferable bourgeois "intellectuals" grants her a moral superiority in condemning theirs. Hardly different, no?

This was witty, cutting, reflective, and overwhelmingly fun.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the e-arc.

[remarkably · Rating 3 out of 5]

solid and fine, but with the form of the 'highbrow' and not the ineffable spirit. overtly (author's note) intended to be a take on thomas bernhard's woodcutters and very transparently so throughout, which always leaves me with the feeling, well, why not read thomas bernhard's woodcutters, and I think the major deviations (e.g. saturation with pop-culture-speak, the introduction of a sugary ending note) are not for the best. dubno is of course correct to see a kind of implicit optimism in bernhard, which she writes in her afterword — but I think she is wildly incorrect in believing that making that optimism more explicit and overt represents any kind of advance resp. the original. other than that a basically enjoyable hour of my life. whips along nicely, some good or perhaps even very good character psychology, middling use of language that excited no particular feeling in me, skewering of art-world types which was accurate and sharp but not exactly funny. I was also rather sniped by the line editing, which I know it is a little churlish to get too worked up about, but I can't read things like ‘my face of approbation softened into a smile’ without becoming somewhat aggrieved

[Niamh McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't even really know how I feel about this but I will say - if you can, read it in one sitting. I feel like this book has so so much potential, but something was lacking. I also felt that the ending was disconnected from the rest of the story and wasn't a good fit for me as the reader; it didn't do what it thought it was doing. I really enjoyed the way in which this was written over the course of one evening, it felt like an expansion of lots of little thoughts we can have in a minute amount of time, expanded out to tell our mc's story. I thought it was quite insightful, funny and thoughtful - if a little overdone on the criticism of rich people which I maybe could have read less of. And I was unsure at the beginning, but I really grew to like the use of italicisation throughout. The sarcasm was dripping off the page.

Thank you to the publisher for this ARC!

[Amy McEwan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just a woman ranting about the bourgeois.

[Sam Cheng · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s one long cultural dinner party for artists.

Several months after our unnamed main character moves back to New York, she learns of Rebecca’s death at 30. Ten years Rebecca’s junior, our main narrator loses touch with Rebecca for 5 years. Last she heard, Rebecca still craved fame, working as an actress and director. She took prescription painkillers for her depression, and the cocktail of drugs would eventually kill her. Before the two women shifted from close friends to strangers, though, the MC had not moved from The City yet. Their relationship evolves when the MC grows closer to Nicole and Eugene, a wealthy couple who protect their high-brow clout in the art world. At 19, eager, naive, and excited to become a writer, the MC becomes their protégé and protectee. The symbiotic relationship—she, amusement; they, benefactors—exists until the MC sees through their bizarre approach to creating and gatekeeping culture. When she extricates herself from their toxic ensnarement, she and Rebecca have already drifted; the MC learns from her new Bohemian friends to look down on Rebecca’s anxiety for fame and her lack of success in creating art.

Although she has no interest to socialize with Nicole, Eugene, and the other avant garde-ers, she emerges from the woodwork to honor Rebecca at the memorial service. The story, then, is her first-person telling of her experience with and assessment of N and E’s tutelage and her transformed philosophy of art and culture. Dubno’s debut reminds me of Bosker’s journalistic endeavors in Get The Picture as she investigates how some American artists participate in their cultural sphere. In Dubno’s fictitious work, the MC critiques the “criteria for . . . membership” into the cultural community. A famous actor at the dinner party also delivers monologues, offering her criticism of the artists in her company’s self-importance. She announces, “I’ve gleaned, you guys in the art world need to elevate everything to make it feel worthwhile. Why not just admit to enjoying a beautiful object, instead of finding the need to justify it to yourself by discussing it in unintelligible language that doesn’t describe why you like it?”

I generally don’t mind a sarcastic narrator who brings a mood of transcendent judgment. Perhaps the contrast from young and ignorant to grown and intelligent seems unpalatable. The contrast is fine as such, but the mode of “everyone is asinine except the transcended few” might seem unbelievable to me because I don’t work in the world of art (and, by and large, the spirit in my field is unlike what Dubno details here). In sum, I understand the author’s questioning of the philosophy of artists—I’ll always remember Makoto Fujimura telling me not to let art intimidate but heal. However, I hoped the narrator’s glum and bitter voice would even out before she reaches another moment of enlightenment, drunk after the party, manifesting happiness and love to others.

Dubno includes a note at the end of the novel and explains her inspiration behind using “Thomas Bernhard’s 1984 novel, Holzfällen, translated into English as Woodcutters.”

My thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for an ARC.

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The unnamed narrator has returned from London to New York after many years away. She's unhappy to be back and desperate to stay tucked away from the acquaintances she had when she lived in New York previously. However, after learning of her friend Rebecca's death, she bumps into an old friend, Eugene, and is invited to a dinner party that will honor a famous actress. (And, of course honoring Rebecca. But only performatively).
And that is what this book highlights. The performative nature of grieving, living, existing.

As the narrator sits in a corner sofa awaiting the arrival of the very late guest of honor, she analyzing the other guests, What follows is a stream of consciousness about the pretensions of the artworld, artists, and how they value their own intellect, wealth, and achievement over the value of their art.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[City Elf Reader (Ryan) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story takes place over a dinner party full of art world and cultural “elites.” Our narrator sits in the corner with a fake smile (when she can bear it) and performs a mental take down of each and every guest with an obsessive fervor.

Unfortunately, this just wasn’t the book for me. It is essentially just someone being a hater for about 210 pages, with a good ending that comes too late in the story. While it was funny and interesting for the first 40 or so pages, I reached my limit on how much complaining I could take. It became boring and uninteresting to me.

Based on merit, It is well written and I did like the ending. The seething sarcasm and distain jumped off the page. The characters felt very real. My partner is in the art world and this book does a good job of characterizing the very real and very detestable personalities that permeate that space.

I don’t think being a hater is cool, fun, or interesting, even if I do think think the pseudo-Intellectual, pretentious, and privileged former friend group of our narrator deserve her, let’s say, astute observations.

It’s like…. Ok now what? The “what” doesn’t come until the last 5 or so pages and by then who cares.

Thank you Scribner for the ARC

[Rachel Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 perhaps??

Yeah, so I stand by my update about 75% through the novel--it's basically 200 pages of main character talking mad trash on some seriously pretentious pricks. Then another baddie comes in with fire and a mic drop.

The no chapter, no paragraph, no break format took getting used to...can't say it grew on me. It felt a bit meandering and I struggled with the writing style.

But overall? Who doesn't love to see an asshole getting taken down a couple notches? This was jolly good fun!

[Ice Magrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work of utter brilliance. It's astute, charming, witty, wry, propulsive—every single thing I could ask for—and all the other compliments in the English language.

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

in the words of lorde… what was that

[Kaleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yet ANOTHER gossipy miserable book about a young woman in NYC who hates her vapid friends. This one was clever and self-aware which was refreshing, though. Most of them are only miserable. I’ll give a miserable book a pass as long as it is funny/clever and self-aware.

[Novel Visits · Rating 2 out of 5]

@scribnerbooks | #partner I’m a sucker for a short book. Many of us are. My problem is that I just don’t seem to be able to throw in the towel when they’re short. I’ll keep going no matter how poorly one is working for me. That was most recently the case with 𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 by Zoe Dubno. ⁣
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This story centers on a woman in the NYC “artistic” community who has been hiding out in Europe for 5 years. She’s only returned because her visas are up, and in time runs into another in this group. He invites her to dinner honoring a little known actress. This dinner happens to be on the same day a friend of theirs is buried. At that dinner are many other artistic types whom the narrator had hoped to avoid. ⁣
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I consider myself a champion of debut authors, so this one pains me. Starting with the good: Dubno’s literary choices were incredibly brave. She (and her editors) had to know that many would not be widely loved. Yet, together they worked in a cohesive package, likely accomplishing what she had hoped to. Which brings me to what I didn’t care for:⁣
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* Stream of consciousness telling - I never like this and had it been clearer in the blurb, I probably wouldn’t have read it.⁣
* One LONG paragraph - By that I mean the ENTIRE book, all 224 pages. Finding places to stop was impossible.⁣
* Italicized dialogue - The book doesn’t contain much dialogue, but what’s there is within the paragraph, but in italics, no quotation marks and often without attribution.⁣
* Vitriol - If I only had a single word, that’s the one I’d sum up this book with. The narrator is SO negative, so aggressively cruel in her musings. It grew painful being in her head.⁣
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The last few pages made the narrator a bit more likable and the book more memorable. My biggest takeaway is that I need to stop allowing myself to be seduced by short books!⁣

[Matt]

temporary (?) DNF

started reading and realized the entire book has NO paragraph breaks and my brain cannot do this in e-arc format but i’d try it again once the physical book comes out

[James B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for the ebook. This is a pretty amazing achievement for a first novel that is one long, angry (also observant and very funny) screed about falling into the cult of the New York art world, escaping to Europe and then, running out of a viable visa, right back in New York and ambushed to rejoin this despised group for one night only under the guise of celebrating one who has just passed away, but that only turns into a night to try and claw a famous actress into their clutches, only to have the actress speak simply and eviscerate the whole room. Even though this short novel is written without chapter or paragraph breaks, she still takes her time identifying each major character, showing the ways that first attracted her, only to find their deadly flaws by the end. It’s quite a performance.

[antonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at work, knowing nothing about it, and was completely swept away. Happiness and Love is a debut novel that feels both sharp and quietly tender, it’s a witty, melancholic unraveling of the art world’s glossy pretension’s seen through the jaded eyes of a disillusioned narrator. It unfolds over the course of a single evening at a dinner party, hosted by an estranged artist and curator couple, where every interaction brims with performative charm and quiet despair. As someone who has always been surrounded by art and literature, whether it be family, friends or work I found Dubno’s portrayal strikingly familiar, cutting, clever, and painfully true, the narrator’s observations are biting yet beautiful as she captures the loneliness that lingers beneath the surface of social performances. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s painfully self aware. But most of all, it’s honest a reminder of how hard we try to curate our lives, and how desperately we crave something real. my only reason for 4 stars and not 5 is due to the format, I need chapters and this is just written as one whole piece in 260+ pages, the undiagnosed adhd in me said nope

[Hayley Groom · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those books where I see a lot of people rating 4-5 stars and I feel like I am missing something.

My brain really struggled to even get around reading this on an e-reader as there were no breaks or paragraphs. My eyes would swim across the page and I ended up re-reading something or find I’d jumped to a different place.

While this was witty and sarcastically funny in places, ultimately I just found it incredibly boring.

My honest reaction: Girl, protect your energy and just leave if you hate everyone so much.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

2/5 stars ⭐️

[Brandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because the description was interesting, and I really liked the cover.

I thought the book started out strong. I did enjoy the writing. I couldn’t get interested in any characters, they were awful. It started to drag, and then it became a struggle to sit through the book.

Thank you Scribner and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this ebook.