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Happy Hour
A stickily hot New York summer is cooly observed in this dazzling debut novel.
It's the summer of 2013, and while New York City swelters Isa and Gala scrape and hustle By day they sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side among a rotating cast of artists, academics and bad-mannered grifters. Desires aren't for denying, not this season. But as money gets sparse and circumstances grow precarious, the pair struggle to convert social capital into something more tangible.
In the last bitter blush of capitalism, when the only agency afforded to you is in the image you present to the world, getting that presentation sharp and shining can feel like the most important thing in the world. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and looking grand in a system that wants you to do neither.
It's the summer of 2013, and while New York City swelters Isa and Gala scrape and hustle By day they sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side among a rotating cast of artists, academics and bad-mannered grifters. Desires aren't for denying, not this season. But as money gets sparse and circumstances grow precarious, the pair struggle to convert social capital into something more tangible.
In the last bitter blush of capitalism, when the only agency afforded to you is in the image you present to the world, getting that presentation sharp and shining can feel like the most important thing in the world. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and looking grand in a system that wants you to do neither.
273 pages, Paperback
First published September 8, 2020
1831 people are currently reading
92404 people want to read
About the author
Marlowe Granados
3 books277 followersMarlowe Granados is a writer and filmmaker. She co-hosts The Mean Reds, a podcast dedicated to women-led films, and her advice column, "Designs for Living," appears in The Baffler. After spending time in New York and London, Granados currently resides in Toronto. Her debut novel is Happy Hour. Twitter and Instagram: @marlowetatiana.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,213 reviews
April 26, 2022
if you need a plot you’ll hate this book, but if you’re into flaneuring and wandering and shenanigans and atmosphere this will do it for you! Isa is a compelling narrator and her Observations about Youth hit the spot.
December 3, 2022
the worst thing a person or character can be isn't unlikable. it's boring,
these characters are definitely not boring.
what they are is very pretentious and self-serious and generally Too Damn Much but i did always find them interesting. and that's enough for me!
maybe coincidentally and maybe not, same goes for the writing style. overwrought for sure but i will take that over blah any day of the goddamn week.
fun!
bottom line: too much over not enough!
3.5
---------------
tbr review
not a want to read, a need to read
these characters are definitely not boring.
what they are is very pretentious and self-serious and generally Too Damn Much but i did always find them interesting. and that's enough for me!
maybe coincidentally and maybe not, same goes for the writing style. overwrought for sure but i will take that over blah any day of the goddamn week.
fun!
bottom line: too much over not enough!
3.5
---------------
tbr review
not a want to read, a need to read
May 28, 2021
2.5
Reading this was like watching a mid-season episode of Gossip Girl.
Reading this was like watching a mid-season episode of Gossip Girl.
June 21, 2022
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As the title and cover themselves suggest, Happy Hour is the book equivalent of an aperitif. I’m thinking of an Aperol spritz and some black olives. Nice enough while you’re having them but once they are gone you’re prepared to move onto something more substantial. That is not to say that Happy Hour has no merits, if anything, my frustration towards this novel stems from the fact that, in many ways, this could have been an excellent read. But, it was an unfunny, shallow, and monotonous story about young pretty people who enjoy drinking and eating at 'in' bodegas.
Happy Hour implements the kind of literary devices and motifs that are all the rage in a certain subset of millennial literature. We have a wry narrator who is in her twenties, prone to self-sabotage, alienated 24/7, and leading a rather directionless life. While she does feel detached from those around her, her running commentary is as sharp as a knife. The dialogues have a mumblecore vibe to them so that many of the conversations sound like something we ourselves have heard in RL (the kind of small talk that happens at wannabe-artsy-parties etc). Sadly, I found many of the scenes in Happy Hour to be repetitive and interchangeable with one another. Isa and Gala meet up with some people they may or may not know at a bar or at someone’s flat. They get tipsy, or drunk, talk about nothing in particular with the other guests, and eventually make their way back home by grabbing a taxi. They try to get by sponging off other people, setting up a market stall where they halfheartedly try to sell clothes, pose as models for artists, or even by going to bars and being paid (cash + unlimited drinks) by the owner to attract more clients (making in 3 hours what would take me, a minimum-wage-worker, a whole-ass shift). Because of their immigration status, they cannot apply to ‘desk jobs’, but we never really learn much about that. Their past is very intentionally shrouded in mystery, barely alluded to. I assume they are Canadian given that they speak English fluently and that they seem familiar with American/Western culture.
I sort of resented the implication that they are ‘survivors’. They may not have a family to fall back onto, but A) they have each other B) they have travelled and can earn money fairly easily because they are young and pretty C) they are CONNECTED. In what could seem like a running-gag of sorts Isa always seems to come across someone she knows. Most of their ‘friends’ and acquaintances seem well-off and educated and these two are able to go out partying every night or so without actually spending all of their money this way. They make no conscious effort to save up, wasting money on the kind of meals that will not be filling or nutritious (ever heard of rice and beans? clearly not) nor do they try to rein in their night lifestyle. While they are quick, Isa especially, to notice how privileged the people around them are, they seem unaware that beauty is a currency and that their ability to party every night or earn money modelling or sponge off rich obnoxious men is directly proportional to their physical apperance.
Isa has ‘suffered’; one of the men she sort of sees briefly during the course of the novel ghosts her or something along those lines and not for one second was I convinced that she was truly broken up about it. The author really tries to make her sound jaded and caustic but her observations were predictably vanilla, and, worst still, always seem to posit her in a good light. The dynamic between Isa and Gala was the most disappointing aspect of the novel. As I’ve said, I’m all for complicated female friendships like the one in Moshfegh’s MYORAR, or between Ferrante’s Lila and Lenù or Morrison’s Sula and Nel or Ruchika Tomar’s Cale and Penny. But here, eh. Isa is clearly better than Gala. Gala is selfish, superficial, a bad friend and possibly even a bad person. She’s a fake whose only moments of vulnerability are an act to earn ‘male’ attention or sympathy from others. And I hate that they have to resort to the kind of ‘who has a right to be sad’ pissing content. Gala was born in Sarajevo but Isa ridicules the fact that the Bosnian war may have traumatised her since she left when she was just a ‘baby’ (as if her parents’ trauma couldn’t have possibly have affected her growing up) and immediately has to mention her own ACTUAL trauma (her mom died, i think). Like, ma che cazzo? And before you say, clearly Isa believes herself to be the good guy, well, other characters consolidate this narrative of her being GOOD and Gala bad. Every guy they come across prefers Isa to Gala, all of their ‘shared’ friends don’t give two shits about Gala but care about Isa etc etc.
And, boy, the storyline was just so very repetitive. Yeah, the author is able to convey a sort of artsy-academic-hipster-millennial atmosphere however, even if a lot of the dialogues in her novel sound like actual conversations (the type you may overhear at parties or in a bar or even while using public transport) that doesn’t result in an incredibly realistic and or compelling narrative. Isa was a very one-dimensional vapid character who manages to be both dull and irksome. She's a twenty-something possibly Canadian woman who describes herself as being both Pinoy and Salvadoreña. She was raised by her mother after her father decided to go MIA or whatever. Her mother died a few years ago and even if Isa barely acknowledges her, her presence is felt by her absence. While I appreciated the author’s subtle approach to Isa’s grief, my heart did not warm up to Isa. I wanted to like her and some of her comments about modern culture or the so-called millennial malaise were relatable(ish), but, I disliked how full of herself she was but not in an obvious egomaniacal sort of way, no, in a more self-pitying, ‘I’m Not Like Other People’, way. She has to put with Gala and the mean people she meets at her parties and her limbs ache after hours spent lying still for a painting and she’s always the one making the money whereas Gala does fuck all and it isn't fair that horrible socialites have it better than her. Her navel-gazing wasn’t particularly amusing, her moments of introspection struck me as self-dramatising, and her observations on class, identity, and life in New York were rather banal. Worst of all, Isa’s dry narration is profoundly unfunny. She sounds exactly like the people she’s so quick to ridicule.
I will say that I did enjoy reading her thoughts on the art of conversation and I did find the novel to have a strong atmosphere and sense of place. You can easily envision the kind of events and parties the girls take part in, as well as the kind of crowds occupying these places. It just so happens that like Isa herself I’m not all that keen on the rich and pretentious. Unlike Isa however, I do not, and would not want to, move in their same circles. For all her complaining Isa doesn’t really try to forge more meaningful connections nor did she seem to really care about Gala. Their friendship seemed one of convenience and nothing else.
That’s more or less it. I wouldn’t have minded if Isa’s voice had been as amusing and entertaining as say the main character in Luster or My Year of Rest and Relaxation or Pretend I’m Dead or You Exist Too Much or The Idiot. It just so happens that I actively disliked Isa. This is weird given that the mcs from the novels I’ve just mentioned are not necessarily nice or kind or strictly likeable. But I found myself drawn to them all the same. Isa just pissed me off. She’s constantly painting herself as the better friend or the better person, and other characters are shown to be bad or mean or shallow. In My Year of Rest and Relaxation both the narrator and her ‘best friend’ are depicted as solipsistic, often immature, decidedly toxic people. Here instead Isa is the good guy and almost every other character is bad (because they are wealthy, white, pretentious, superficial etc.). At one point she’s at a gay bar (if i recall correctly) and someone asks her what she’s doing there and that this isn’t a place for her housemate fends him off immediately (saying something like “she’s my sister you old, white queen”). I’m not keen on authors using gay characters to ‘defend’ straight ones from other lgbtq+ people. Like, it’s okay because a gay character is telling off another gay character. He called her ‘his sister’ so that makes her what, part of the queer community?! This scene just rubbed me up the wrong way. What, Isa has a right to be in gay spaces because she has a gay friend and she’s just Not Like Other Straight People? Ma daje!
While, yes, I did dislike and was bored by Isa as well her story’s supposed storyline (don’t get me wrong i love a good ol’ slice-of-life now and again but here these parties & co were so samey and intent only on satirising millennials & the-so-called upper-crust) I actually liked the author’s style.
It’s a pity that I wasn’t able to connect to Isa (or anyone else for the matter). The cast of ever-changing characters made it hard for me to become familiar with anyone really. Many of them also happen to have silly posh sounding nicknames or names that make it even harder to remember who-the-hell-was-who. Some just exist only in the space of a single scene or to deliver a throwaway line and nothing else besides. The men around Isa all blurred into one generic asshole-ish kind of man. The story ends on a cheesy note, with Isa being ready to finally talk about her past.
But I don’t wish to dissuade prospective readers from giving this a shot. If you liked Jo Hamya’s Three Romes or Kavita Bedford’s Friends & Dark Shapes you might like this more than I was able to. It just so happens that, as stated above, I hated Isa and found her narrative to have one too many of the same kind of scenes/conversations. I would have liked more variety in the story and the characters themselves. All in all, it left me wanting. Oh, I just remembered, there were way too many capitalised words. I understand that the author wanted to lay emphasis on said words but it felt gimmicky after awhile.
If you liked it or were able to relate to Isa, I'm happy for you, in fact, I wish that I could say the same. Please avoid leaving 'you are stupid/wrong/well actually I loved Isa and you are clearly missing the point' comments. I'm fully aware that the dislike Isa elicited in me is entirely subjective.
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
“It takes practice to have restraint, and we are not yet at an age to try it out.”
As the title and cover themselves suggest, Happy Hour is the book equivalent of an aperitif. I’m thinking of an Aperol spritz and some black olives. Nice enough while you’re having them but once they are gone you’re prepared to move onto something more substantial. That is not to say that Happy Hour has no merits, if anything, my frustration towards this novel stems from the fact that, in many ways, this could have been an excellent read. But, it was an unfunny, shallow, and monotonous story about young pretty people who enjoy drinking and eating at 'in' bodegas.
Happy Hour implements the kind of literary devices and motifs that are all the rage in a certain subset of millennial literature. We have a wry narrator who is in her twenties, prone to self-sabotage, alienated 24/7, and leading a rather directionless life. While she does feel detached from those around her, her running commentary is as sharp as a knife. The dialogues have a mumblecore vibe to them so that many of the conversations sound like something we ourselves have heard in RL (the kind of small talk that happens at wannabe-artsy-parties etc). Sadly, I found many of the scenes in Happy Hour to be repetitive and interchangeable with one another. Isa and Gala meet up with some people they may or may not know at a bar or at someone’s flat. They get tipsy, or drunk, talk about nothing in particular with the other guests, and eventually make their way back home by grabbing a taxi. They try to get by sponging off other people, setting up a market stall where they halfheartedly try to sell clothes, pose as models for artists, or even by going to bars and being paid (cash + unlimited drinks) by the owner to attract more clients (making in 3 hours what would take me, a minimum-wage-worker, a whole-ass shift). Because of their immigration status, they cannot apply to ‘desk jobs’, but we never really learn much about that. Their past is very intentionally shrouded in mystery, barely alluded to. I assume they are Canadian given that they speak English fluently and that they seem familiar with American/Western culture.
I sort of resented the implication that they are ‘survivors’. They may not have a family to fall back onto, but A) they have each other B) they have travelled and can earn money fairly easily because they are young and pretty C) they are CONNECTED. In what could seem like a running-gag of sorts Isa always seems to come across someone she knows. Most of their ‘friends’ and acquaintances seem well-off and educated and these two are able to go out partying every night or so without actually spending all of their money this way. They make no conscious effort to save up, wasting money on the kind of meals that will not be filling or nutritious (ever heard of rice and beans? clearly not) nor do they try to rein in their night lifestyle. While they are quick, Isa especially, to notice how privileged the people around them are, they seem unaware that beauty is a currency and that their ability to party every night or earn money modelling or sponge off rich obnoxious men is directly proportional to their physical apperance.
Isa has ‘suffered’; one of the men she sort of sees briefly during the course of the novel ghosts her or something along those lines and not for one second was I convinced that she was truly broken up about it. The author really tries to make her sound jaded and caustic but her observations were predictably vanilla, and, worst still, always seem to posit her in a good light. The dynamic between Isa and Gala was the most disappointing aspect of the novel. As I’ve said, I’m all for complicated female friendships like the one in Moshfegh’s MYORAR, or between Ferrante’s Lila and Lenù or Morrison’s Sula and Nel or Ruchika Tomar’s Cale and Penny. But here, eh. Isa is clearly better than Gala. Gala is selfish, superficial, a bad friend and possibly even a bad person. She’s a fake whose only moments of vulnerability are an act to earn ‘male’ attention or sympathy from others. And I hate that they have to resort to the kind of ‘who has a right to be sad’ pissing content. Gala was born in Sarajevo but Isa ridicules the fact that the Bosnian war may have traumatised her since she left when she was just a ‘baby’ (as if her parents’ trauma couldn’t have possibly have affected her growing up) and immediately has to mention her own ACTUAL trauma (her mom died, i think). Like, ma che cazzo? And before you say, clearly Isa believes herself to be the good guy, well, other characters consolidate this narrative of her being GOOD and Gala bad. Every guy they come across prefers Isa to Gala, all of their ‘shared’ friends don’t give two shits about Gala but care about Isa etc etc.
And, boy, the storyline was just so very repetitive. Yeah, the author is able to convey a sort of artsy-academic-hipster-millennial atmosphere however, even if a lot of the dialogues in her novel sound like actual conversations (the type you may overhear at parties or in a bar or even while using public transport) that doesn’t result in an incredibly realistic and or compelling narrative. Isa was a very one-dimensional vapid character who manages to be both dull and irksome. She's a twenty-something possibly Canadian woman who describes herself as being both Pinoy and Salvadoreña. She was raised by her mother after her father decided to go MIA or whatever. Her mother died a few years ago and even if Isa barely acknowledges her, her presence is felt by her absence. While I appreciated the author’s subtle approach to Isa’s grief, my heart did not warm up to Isa. I wanted to like her and some of her comments about modern culture or the so-called millennial malaise were relatable(ish), but, I disliked how full of herself she was but not in an obvious egomaniacal sort of way, no, in a more self-pitying, ‘I’m Not Like Other People’, way. She has to put with Gala and the mean people she meets at her parties and her limbs ache after hours spent lying still for a painting and she’s always the one making the money whereas Gala does fuck all and it isn't fair that horrible socialites have it better than her. Her navel-gazing wasn’t particularly amusing, her moments of introspection struck me as self-dramatising, and her observations on class, identity, and life in New York were rather banal. Worst of all, Isa’s dry narration is profoundly unfunny. She sounds exactly like the people she’s so quick to ridicule.
I will say that I did enjoy reading her thoughts on the art of conversation and I did find the novel to have a strong atmosphere and sense of place. You can easily envision the kind of events and parties the girls take part in, as well as the kind of crowds occupying these places. It just so happens that like Isa herself I’m not all that keen on the rich and pretentious. Unlike Isa however, I do not, and would not want to, move in their same circles. For all her complaining Isa doesn’t really try to forge more meaningful connections nor did she seem to really care about Gala. Their friendship seemed one of convenience and nothing else.
That’s more or less it. I wouldn’t have minded if Isa’s voice had been as amusing and entertaining as say the main character in Luster or My Year of Rest and Relaxation or Pretend I’m Dead or You Exist Too Much or The Idiot. It just so happens that I actively disliked Isa. This is weird given that the mcs from the novels I’ve just mentioned are not necessarily nice or kind or strictly likeable. But I found myself drawn to them all the same. Isa just pissed me off. She’s constantly painting herself as the better friend or the better person, and other characters are shown to be bad or mean or shallow. In My Year of Rest and Relaxation both the narrator and her ‘best friend’ are depicted as solipsistic, often immature, decidedly toxic people. Here instead Isa is the good guy and almost every other character is bad (because they are wealthy, white, pretentious, superficial etc.). At one point she’s at a gay bar (if i recall correctly) and someone asks her what she’s doing there and that this isn’t a place for her housemate fends him off immediately (saying something like “she’s my sister you old, white queen”). I’m not keen on authors using gay characters to ‘defend’ straight ones from other lgbtq+ people. Like, it’s okay because a gay character is telling off another gay character. He called her ‘his sister’ so that makes her what, part of the queer community?! This scene just rubbed me up the wrong way. What, Isa has a right to be in gay spaces because she has a gay friend and she’s just Not Like Other Straight People? Ma daje!
While, yes, I did dislike and was bored by Isa as well her story’s supposed storyline (don’t get me wrong i love a good ol’ slice-of-life now and again but here these parties & co were so samey and intent only on satirising millennials & the-so-called upper-crust) I actually liked the author’s style.
It’s a pity that I wasn’t able to connect to Isa (or anyone else for the matter). The cast of ever-changing characters made it hard for me to become familiar with anyone really. Many of them also happen to have silly posh sounding nicknames or names that make it even harder to remember who-the-hell-was-who. Some just exist only in the space of a single scene or to deliver a throwaway line and nothing else besides. The men around Isa all blurred into one generic asshole-ish kind of man. The story ends on a cheesy note, with Isa being ready to finally talk about her past.
But I don’t wish to dissuade prospective readers from giving this a shot. If you liked Jo Hamya’s Three Romes or Kavita Bedford’s Friends & Dark Shapes you might like this more than I was able to. It just so happens that, as stated above, I hated Isa and found her narrative to have one too many of the same kind of scenes/conversations. I would have liked more variety in the story and the characters themselves. All in all, it left me wanting. Oh, I just remembered, there were way too many capitalised words. I understand that the author wanted to lay emphasis on said words but it felt gimmicky after awhile.
If you liked it or were able to relate to Isa, I'm happy for you, in fact, I wish that I could say the same. Please avoid leaving 'you are stupid/wrong/well actually I loved Isa and you are clearly missing the point' comments. I'm fully aware that the dislike Isa elicited in me is entirely subjective.
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
April 19, 2023
the feminine urge to wander around aimlessly with no direction.
October 16, 2022
no plot, just pure vibes and SO many relatable quotes for the girlies in their early twenties like me!!!!
August 29, 2022
happy hour is both a glittering and blistering debut – following two 21 year olds, isa and gala, as they navigate a hot summer in new york with only a few dollars between them. by day, the two best friends sell clothes at a market stall, and by night they attempt to charm their way through the social circles of the city, mingling with artists, socialites, entrepreneurs, stuffy businessman, and fellow dilettantes.
in essence, this novel has all the components of a typical ‘sad girl in a city’ book, just without the ‘sad girl’ part. what makes this novel particularly fun to read is largely due to the main character isa, whose voice is sharp and charming throughout the novel, offering up witty and compelling social observations about both the contemporary upper-class world and the hedonistic, privileged people who inhabit it.
isa’s status as a party girl along with her dry humour allow the book to feel rather Eve Babitz-esque, which i always enjoy in a book. isa’s characterisation is a great blend of wry social contemporary, but also encompasses the naiveté of a twenty-something moving to a city with no money and just the hope that everything will work itself out.
as isa and gala are both undocumented and therefore can’t get a typical desk job, much of the novel follows them hustling for money to make their rent and fund their nightlife escapades. consequently, since both women don’t have much money, the book provides some exploration into beauty as currency – which isa and gala utilise as a way to gain social capital, oftentimes manipulating men who turn out to already be playing mind games of their own.
granados creates a strong atmosphere throughout the novel, perfectly capturing the millennial malaise of a new york summer and the vapidness of the city’s social scene. happy hour is definitely one of those fun, light reads that you just need to let yourself be swept away with. it’s an ode to young, carefree twenty-somethings who are taking full advantage of the time they have to be young and carefree, but also provides a subtly satirical look at the types of people who only chase after the next happy hour.
—
very much a ‘sad girl in a city’ book, just without the ‘sad girl’ part. and yes that does make sense thank you.
in essence, this novel has all the components of a typical ‘sad girl in a city’ book, just without the ‘sad girl’ part. what makes this novel particularly fun to read is largely due to the main character isa, whose voice is sharp and charming throughout the novel, offering up witty and compelling social observations about both the contemporary upper-class world and the hedonistic, privileged people who inhabit it.
isa’s status as a party girl along with her dry humour allow the book to feel rather Eve Babitz-esque, which i always enjoy in a book. isa’s characterisation is a great blend of wry social contemporary, but also encompasses the naiveté of a twenty-something moving to a city with no money and just the hope that everything will work itself out.
as isa and gala are both undocumented and therefore can’t get a typical desk job, much of the novel follows them hustling for money to make their rent and fund their nightlife escapades. consequently, since both women don’t have much money, the book provides some exploration into beauty as currency – which isa and gala utilise as a way to gain social capital, oftentimes manipulating men who turn out to already be playing mind games of their own.
granados creates a strong atmosphere throughout the novel, perfectly capturing the millennial malaise of a new york summer and the vapidness of the city’s social scene. happy hour is definitely one of those fun, light reads that you just need to let yourself be swept away with. it’s an ode to young, carefree twenty-somethings who are taking full advantage of the time they have to be young and carefree, but also provides a subtly satirical look at the types of people who only chase after the next happy hour.
—
very much a ‘sad girl in a city’ book, just without the ‘sad girl’ part. and yes that does make sense thank you.
March 10, 2021
I could read Granados (via her protagonist, Isa) characterize human beings for an hour straight. There is something diabolically enjoyable about the ability to capture and then fillet an archetype in just a few lines. It reminds me of Hemingway, honestly, in the Parisian novels where artistic twenty-somethings take turn fashioning their own insecurities into a lashing for those around them.
The voice is authentic, barbed, a delicate balance between striking observations about the world (and its expectations for her) and the naïveté you must possess to think you can make it in NYC with only a few dollars to your name.
It is entertaining to follow these two twenty-one-year-old women as they hustle their way to socialite status, flitting in and out of the NYC party scene. As poor immigrants without proper documentation, the hustling is a form of survival for them, partying their way to a free meal and cab fare. They can sense the aching want of the men in these circles and deftly manipulate and charm them, although it never seems cruel. The men, most often, are outclassed in their own games.
And it better be damn entertaining, because it is 90% of the book. If I was lucky enough to find myself in their entourage for the weekend, I would be waving them off by 2am. "No, you go ahead, I'm going to crash for the night. I need some water." The book runs it course in 100 pages, and because we are not invested in the emotional arc of these girls (because there is no arc, only the present), the second half is exhausting. I found myself skimming, searching for any scene that didn't involve aperitifs or a boring artist trying to justify his solipsistic ramblings.
Near the end, we get into the emotional detritus left by Isa's mother dying and the fallout of fighting with her best friend. Even then, it seems as if the novel, much like Isa, wants to return to the party, afraid that a lack of attention is a small death itself.
Listen to full reviews at: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/
The voice is authentic, barbed, a delicate balance between striking observations about the world (and its expectations for her) and the naïveté you must possess to think you can make it in NYC with only a few dollars to your name.
It is entertaining to follow these two twenty-one-year-old women as they hustle their way to socialite status, flitting in and out of the NYC party scene. As poor immigrants without proper documentation, the hustling is a form of survival for them, partying their way to a free meal and cab fare. They can sense the aching want of the men in these circles and deftly manipulate and charm them, although it never seems cruel. The men, most often, are outclassed in their own games.
And it better be damn entertaining, because it is 90% of the book. If I was lucky enough to find myself in their entourage for the weekend, I would be waving them off by 2am. "No, you go ahead, I'm going to crash for the night. I need some water." The book runs it course in 100 pages, and because we are not invested in the emotional arc of these girls (because there is no arc, only the present), the second half is exhausting. I found myself skimming, searching for any scene that didn't involve aperitifs or a boring artist trying to justify his solipsistic ramblings.
Near the end, we get into the emotional detritus left by Isa's mother dying and the fallout of fighting with her best friend. Even then, it seems as if the novel, much like Isa, wants to return to the party, afraid that a lack of attention is a small death itself.
Listen to full reviews at: https://bookclubbed.buzzsprout.com/
September 25, 2021
There seems to have emerged this trend of putting unlikeable characters in relatable, everyday situations and call it societal criticism. It's occasionally done successfully (think My Year of Rest and Relaxation), but the line to Gossip Girl and Sex and the City is thin.
Happy Hour is written as a diary and depicts a summer spent in New York City. The protagonist Isa Epley is a twenty-year old party girl, self-aware and pleasure-seeking, ready to have a good time with her best friend Gala Novak. Money might run tight, but that doesn't stop them from mingling with pretentious artists, confident entrepreneurs and preachy intellectuals.
I think the marketing of this made me like it less. It's basically sold as a social commentary, criticising contemporary life and pointing the finger at how people in their twenties tend to think they've figured out what life is about. This is a valid point to make, yet it's the only point the entire novel is making. Isa is full of herself, thinks herself smart and witty and keeps putting herself into categories. She's got that unlikeable air of someone who think of themselves as deep, while merely being arrogant and narcissistic.
This can be entertaining if approached with the right expectations. Maybe do think of it more like an episode of your favourite chit-flick series and then you're ready to be dazzled by New York City life, where everyone is going somewhere. Granados did capture that lifestyle well, introducing us to the thoughts of a socialite who's thriving on meeting new people and always seeking for the next opportunity of free drinks and a fun night out. One might argue it's shallow and it's funny witnessing that through the eyes of someone who thinks she's the opposite, but Granados shows us with this novel that the happy hour is all some people live for.
Happy Hour is written as a diary and depicts a summer spent in New York City. The protagonist Isa Epley is a twenty-year old party girl, self-aware and pleasure-seeking, ready to have a good time with her best friend Gala Novak. Money might run tight, but that doesn't stop them from mingling with pretentious artists, confident entrepreneurs and preachy intellectuals.
I think the marketing of this made me like it less. It's basically sold as a social commentary, criticising contemporary life and pointing the finger at how people in their twenties tend to think they've figured out what life is about. This is a valid point to make, yet it's the only point the entire novel is making. Isa is full of herself, thinks herself smart and witty and keeps putting herself into categories. She's got that unlikeable air of someone who think of themselves as deep, while merely being arrogant and narcissistic.
This can be entertaining if approached with the right expectations. Maybe do think of it more like an episode of your favourite chit-flick series and then you're ready to be dazzled by New York City life, where everyone is going somewhere. Granados did capture that lifestyle well, introducing us to the thoughts of a socialite who's thriving on meeting new people and always seeking for the next opportunity of free drinks and a fun night out. One might argue it's shallow and it's funny witnessing that through the eyes of someone who thinks she's the opposite, but Granados shows us with this novel that the happy hour is all some people live for.
August 12, 2025
coming off of a trend of disaffected female narrators who seek out painful/unhealthy sex as a reprieve in novels where practically nothing happens, this was A BREATHHHHH OF FRESH AIR ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
it took me until about the 40% mark to really buy into the execution of happy hour, but once i was sucked into the episodic diary entry style of parties and passersby and endless opinions from the main character isa, i flew through this. if you're into slice-of-life literature where nothing much happens, i think this is a lovely little break from the current affective trend (dislocation/dissociation/disaffection and/or dread to a numbing, blunted degree) in contemporary literary fiction.
there's quite a bit of emotional avoidance in this, but the narrative is no less buoyant for it, and it is a landscape rich with opinions (on everything and everyone, a fact which i came to adore) and hilarious little "life lessons" from two girls probably far too young to know so much. i love the presumptuous quality of the narration, i love how stuck-up and boy-obsessed isa and gala are and how this plays off of their own sociopolitical positionalities, and i particuarly love that this is a novel populated by way too many throwaway characters.
there's something to be said for narratives that employ too many secondary characters, not as one-dimensional devices, but as simple atmospheric or tonal shifts that are not tied causally to any major plot threads in the book. people come and go in happy hour, and believably so, and while the basic 3-act conflict structure is present skeletally, the "plot" (if you can argue that there is one) doesn't feel artificial or contrived the way that so much commercial literature does these days. there are probably too many men in this and too few women, but the characters are audibly self-absorbed and hedonistic and obsessed with flaunting their own class status in a way that's more often than not incredibly comedic. in a setting like new york, which is both crowded and compressed, this works wonderfully.
it's obvious that a lot (if not all) of this is autobiographical in some way, as marlowe granados comes from a nonfiction background, lives in new york city, and shares quite a lot in common with her characters and world (including the names of some major characters), but this wasn't really a mark against the book for me. i found the journalistic prose style—shrewd, observatory without becoming obsessed with itself or voice/style so much as memories and moments in time—to be refreshing and easy to access. the dialogue is at times melodramatic or cheesy, but i didn't mind too much, because that melodrama and cheesiness fits so well with the set dressings.
i will even forgive granados the corny, totally cliché last line of this book, because it was such a romp. i so admire novels that can pull off no plot convincingly and still leave a lasting impression. i think that ultimately sways me here. happy hour and its too-young party girl bent really sell the "every day is the same day except that we find new standalone adventures each time," without falling victim to the darkly, dangerously sex-obsessed undercurrent that's in vogue everywhere right now.
a book i need to own a physical copy of, to write in and reread endlessly.
it took me until about the 40% mark to really buy into the execution of happy hour, but once i was sucked into the episodic diary entry style of parties and passersby and endless opinions from the main character isa, i flew through this. if you're into slice-of-life literature where nothing much happens, i think this is a lovely little break from the current affective trend (dislocation/dissociation/disaffection and/or dread to a numbing, blunted degree) in contemporary literary fiction.
there's quite a bit of emotional avoidance in this, but the narrative is no less buoyant for it, and it is a landscape rich with opinions (on everything and everyone, a fact which i came to adore) and hilarious little "life lessons" from two girls probably far too young to know so much. i love the presumptuous quality of the narration, i love how stuck-up and boy-obsessed isa and gala are and how this plays off of their own sociopolitical positionalities, and i particuarly love that this is a novel populated by way too many throwaway characters.
there's something to be said for narratives that employ too many secondary characters, not as one-dimensional devices, but as simple atmospheric or tonal shifts that are not tied causally to any major plot threads in the book. people come and go in happy hour, and believably so, and while the basic 3-act conflict structure is present skeletally, the "plot" (if you can argue that there is one) doesn't feel artificial or contrived the way that so much commercial literature does these days. there are probably too many men in this and too few women, but the characters are audibly self-absorbed and hedonistic and obsessed with flaunting their own class status in a way that's more often than not incredibly comedic. in a setting like new york, which is both crowded and compressed, this works wonderfully.
it's obvious that a lot (if not all) of this is autobiographical in some way, as marlowe granados comes from a nonfiction background, lives in new york city, and shares quite a lot in common with her characters and world (including the names of some major characters), but this wasn't really a mark against the book for me. i found the journalistic prose style—shrewd, observatory without becoming obsessed with itself or voice/style so much as memories and moments in time—to be refreshing and easy to access. the dialogue is at times melodramatic or cheesy, but i didn't mind too much, because that melodrama and cheesiness fits so well with the set dressings.
i will even forgive granados the corny, totally cliché last line of this book, because it was such a romp. i so admire novels that can pull off no plot convincingly and still leave a lasting impression. i think that ultimately sways me here. happy hour and its too-young party girl bent really sell the "every day is the same day except that we find new standalone adventures each time," without falling victim to the darkly, dangerously sex-obsessed undercurrent that's in vogue everywhere right now.
a book i need to own a physical copy of, to write in and reread endlessly.
September 5, 2021
As fun and vapid and meaninglessly beautiful yet sophisticated & impressive as an NYC party girl!
January 7, 2022
While I loved this book on its own merits, I do have a secret weapon that helped power my reaction, and it is that Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady is a favorite novel of mine.
(I’m referring to Loos’ 1925, Gatsby-contemporaneous, rampantly best-selling, critically lauded jazz age comedic novel. Not the 1950s Film Code-tempered musical adaptation with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Which has its own charms.)
Anyway - I read this novel, Happy Hour, as pretty much a straight-up tribute to that one, and it’s Just the Right Amount of Updated. As Happy Hour’s 21 year-old protagonist/narrator Isa herself says:
“It’s a sad thing when people take a beautiful old building and try to modernize it. Some things are meant to be restored, not re-interpreted.”
THIS book, then, is a darn near-perfect restoration of THAT book for our more present times.
And don’t get me wrong: GPB did need some restoration. While it is groundbreaking in many ways - I mean, there is still “1925 Stuff” in it.
Also, because we have made at least some Social Progress for Women, Happy Hour is able to fully omit the misspellings, malapropisms, and repetition (So…I mean…I mean) relied upon in GPB. In fact, Isa’s voice is delight to behold, with many an elegant turn of phrase. And I want to be clear that Happy Hour should be read for Joy as much as for Importance!
But, one very important and interesting way that Happy Hour functions as a relevant “restoration” is that, in contrast to Loos’ blonde Little Rockian flapper Lorelei Lee, Happy Hour’s Isa is a biracial young woman of color whom, it’s also alluded, grew up in some degree of itinerant poverty. And the “blonde factor” and stand-in for Lorelei’s down-to-earth companion Dorothy Shaw is here Isa’s friend Gala, whose world-weariness partly stems from being a Bosnian emigrant and, it’s implied, refugee or asylee. (It’s 2013 in the book.)
Anyway, I know that not everyone who has tried to read Loos’ novel recently has loved it - but hear me out! Even if you don’t legitimately think it’s still funny today (and I do), I’d urge you to appreciate its uniqueness and innovation within the context of its time and as a critical part of a long and illustrious history of women being funny, and writing funny, when women have been historically and strenuously discouraged both from being funny and from writing.
In any case - we wouldn’t have many of the funny women and funny TV and funny pop culture that we do today without works like GPB and writers like Loos and those other pioneers like her. And that’s why this classic is Worth Restoring in the first place.
I should here mention that Happy Hour’s author, Marlowe Granados, knows far more about all this stuff than I do. She has a lot of essays and interviews online that you can check out, and is a bit of a scholar not only of women’s and women-centric and darkly humorous retro literature, but also of more recent pop culture, romantic comedies, etc. She names as a few direct influences writers like Loos, and Rona Jaffe - and Jean Rhys, whose protagonists’ influences I can also see in Isa.
But here I am AGAIN talking about this book like its sole merit is its meaningful literary heritage! The other thing is just that I enjoyed it, and the writing, so damn much! I’ve put some random quotes at the end of this so that you can get an idea of the Humour and the Tone.
As with Loos’ book and many good socially critical yet comedic works, its social criticism is lightly and artfully applied primarily around the privileged, (mostly) rich, (mostly) white, and/or (mostly) male patrons and benefactors of Isa and Gala and the hoity-toity scenes they haunt, and especially via the steady stream of microaggressions - sexist, racist, classist, the assumptions, underestimations, and misconceptions - that the heroines must routinely dodge and navigate in their efforts to tour NYC and feed themselves socially, culturally, and literally. (Preferably caviar.)
Also, Isa, like Lorelei Lee, is very self-aware and meta about what she is doing and the life she is living. If the many Gentlemen who routinely insist on comparing one’s appearance to that of Pocahontas can pay for a round of French 75s, what is to be gained by not availing oneself of this?
I guess I should say something about the To Plot or Not To Plot question. As in Loos’ book, plot’s a “spicy slice-of-life” kind of thing here, with no traditional central conflict, but rather a series of recounted events taking place during an adventurous trip (a summer sojourn in 2013 NYC in this case), gently framed at the beginning by the starting of a diary and at the end by the suggestion of the diary’s fate or rather what developments may follow from the diary’s having been kept. The diary functions as bootstraps, or I guess, stiletto straps.
The last thing I’d like to say is that I don’t get - nay, I even Disapprove Of - all the comparisons of this work to Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, HBO’s Girls, and the like. This book is simply nothing like any of those. We needn’t compare every single recent cultural product recounting the societal escapades of would-be fashionable younger women in NYC, any more than we need to compare everything dark and/or murder-y and scholastic to The Secret History.
These are now Vast Genre! Shall we endeavor to compare every single book about, say, Dysfunctional Family, or War? Stylish and/or often women-identifying people have been aiming to live it up in NYC since the beginning of time, and will hopefully continue to be able to do so, and thus culture reflects this. It is pointless and minimizing - a fool’s errand, really - to fruitlessly bundle together most recent cultural artifacts making any reference to this.
I’ve also seen comparisons to Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I kind of get what people are going for with this one in that it’s conceivable fans of one book may enjoy another. However, I think it’s important to note that the comparison on its face makes no sense at all. Don’t get me wrong: MYORAR is also one of my favorite novels ever. But it’s Completely Different! MYORAR is a (albeit darkly comic) novel of having reached a nadir of depression and nihilism, about the absolute meaninglessness and pointlessness of everything and about being impressed and inspired and interested by nothing whatever.
In contrast, Happy Hour is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of this. It’s in the tradition of the youthful adventure novel, the educational world tour novel, the Bildungsroman. Yes, there are subtle, fleeting traces of sadness and desperation, but it is a book about deliberately living and learning and exploring, chasing and finding pleasure and surprise, taking notice of and seizing the day (at least between noon and 4 AM) when and while you can. It’s a novel of exuberant and resourceful tuning in, not jaded and bereft checking out.
I mean, Isa and Gala would be the LAST to voluntarily sleep their lives away; indeed, they hardly sleep at all.
I’ll leave you with a few random quotes from the book, then. I wish you enjoyment!
*** *** ***
“He would not seem out of place in a Victorian oil painting, and his family owns several. He was known for making a lot of risky investments, and I was one of his favourites.”
“The taller one gestured towards me before sitting down, asking me, ‘Are you from Mauritius?’ I said, ‘No, but I can spell it.’”
“I have little patience for girls like Alice. She is always steering the conversation back to the subject of Her. It’s almost impressive. Like maybe you say that you are having a bad case of spring allergies, Alice will say, ‘Well I’ve never had allergies, but I did sneeze once.’”
“Ally was nice to me, probably to the extent she could be nice to anyone who is twenty-one.”
“They looked like what the word ‘bonehead’ is meant to describe.”
“She has a lot of what people consider ‘moral fibre,’ which simply means a variety of fears instilled in you when you’re young enough to be scared.”
“People have the funniest ideas. You can’t just enter a hierarchy; you have to demolish it.”
“Here I was doing whippets with a grown man; life really takes you anywhere.”
“I have been intrepid. I bought a copy of the New Yorker (which I had to go all the way to Brooklyn Heights to get) and highlighted all the interesting events listed. I showed Gala, and she pointed out one and said, ‘This one looks the most boring. That’ll be what you want.’ It was a talk with a French economic theorist who seemed quite popular and even had a bestselling book that, from what I read, got attention from literary circles. I think that is quite a feat; I don’t believe the economy is a popular subject.”
“I realize now, the older you get, the harder it is to be impressed because people make you feel ashamed of ever being impressed by anything at all. I keep many glowing remarks to myself because of this.”
“I asked him about his business, how long he had lived in the city, who his last girlfriend was—because most people in New York are happy to be invited to diatribe.”
“I already have plenty of names I don’t recognize in my phone, and I usually have to save them with an identifying noun. I can only faintly recall who ‘Todd Abyssinian Cat,’ ‘Hera White Boots,’ or ‘Cole Sculptor/Mediator’ are. If there is a finite capacity in one’s mind for names, I have surely reached my limit.”
“The voice said, ‘Things have been really boring since I last saw you. I think we should go on a date.’ I really could not place who it was, since I could have been having this same conversation with innumerable friends.”
“Gala described it as a glittery sheath and said of whomever it was from, ‘They know your favourite colour is sequins.’”
“The carpet was patterned with white, tangled hexagons against a royal blue background, conforming to an unwritten rule that all hotel carpets must be awful. It looked like a frat boy’s Times Square dream of Edith Wharton. In this way the hotel was very New York.”
“Everyone kept asking us what we were doing in New York, what we were working on, and what our general story was. When Gala told them we were doing ‘absolutely nothing,’ she was met with raised eyebrows. They would add, ‘Do you have internships at magazines?’ No one seemed to understand what Gala was saying, and I thought perhaps she wasn’t enunciating to their liking. I know she sometimes warbles. So I repeated emphatically, ‘Nothing! Nothing at all!’ After that, people were not so interested in telling us what they did.”
“These two were know-it-alls who knew very little.”
“There’s an immediate shock that comes when you realize a Scene is about to be made and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”
“I picked up a book of essays on cruelty in an effort to better myself. Just from reading, I can tell people are obsessed with themselves, even when they loathe themselves, because they’re charmed with how they do it.”
“I don’t think I have ever met a woman I wouldn’t consider formidable. My mother was just so. Being a young girl is always a cute trick. It leaves nothing to be desired and it is easy. I feel as though becoming a woman is like a long tradition of going through things and coming out strong, but I am tired and weary!”
“And it’s not that we dance to attract anyone to join us—rather the opposite. I am more comfortable being a Fixture than a Possibility.”
“I ran up the stairs to wake Gala because she has a true appreciation for department stores; she calls them Free Museums. She really sprang out of bed, which I have never seen her do.”
“I am highly educated in true sorrow, so I don’t succumb to silly criticism.”
“Lucian came downstairs in his Japanese-silk pyjamas and said ‘something must be happening’ because he has ‘never ever’ seen us awake before noon. That’s a lie. I’m always awake in the morning. I’m usually lying down with my eyes closed waiting for the appropriate time to wake up Gala.”
“Rich intellectuals are funny because they are accepting of dirt and nature. They leave their windows open without a screen and only have natural cleaning products. They filter their water using charcoal and leave their butter dish out. I don’t know how they get rid of any germs, but perhaps it is a marker of my upbringing that I think bleach is all-purpose.”
“Intellectuals are funny because they always think you mean more than you say, when sometimes I don’t mean anything at all.”
“We would’ve gone home, but putting a cap on an evening of adventure can be tough. It takes practice to have restraint, and we are not yet at an age to try it out.”
“It’s always better when I am forced to be in public rather than in bed deliberating everything I may have said or done—wondering whether this time I went a little too far, was a little too forthcoming, a little too much. I suppose I’m lucky I never feel that way normally. It’s just on these particular occasions the feeling becomes acute. Maybe it’s my comeuppance for everything else I do.”
“The only time girls can really shake those feelings is when they repeat the night to their friends. People take this ritual lightly, as though it has not been a tradition that has aided girls in regaining their bravery after every misstep for almost ever.”
(I’m referring to Loos’ 1925, Gatsby-contemporaneous, rampantly best-selling, critically lauded jazz age comedic novel. Not the 1950s Film Code-tempered musical adaptation with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Which has its own charms.)
Anyway - I read this novel, Happy Hour, as pretty much a straight-up tribute to that one, and it’s Just the Right Amount of Updated. As Happy Hour’s 21 year-old protagonist/narrator Isa herself says:
“It’s a sad thing when people take a beautiful old building and try to modernize it. Some things are meant to be restored, not re-interpreted.”
THIS book, then, is a darn near-perfect restoration of THAT book for our more present times.
And don’t get me wrong: GPB did need some restoration. While it is groundbreaking in many ways - I mean, there is still “1925 Stuff” in it.
Also, because we have made at least some Social Progress for Women, Happy Hour is able to fully omit the misspellings, malapropisms, and repetition (So…I mean…I mean) relied upon in GPB. In fact, Isa’s voice is delight to behold, with many an elegant turn of phrase. And I want to be clear that Happy Hour should be read for Joy as much as for Importance!
But, one very important and interesting way that Happy Hour functions as a relevant “restoration” is that, in contrast to Loos’ blonde Little Rockian flapper Lorelei Lee, Happy Hour’s Isa is a biracial young woman of color whom, it’s also alluded, grew up in some degree of itinerant poverty. And the “blonde factor” and stand-in for Lorelei’s down-to-earth companion Dorothy Shaw is here Isa’s friend Gala, whose world-weariness partly stems from being a Bosnian emigrant and, it’s implied, refugee or asylee. (It’s 2013 in the book.)
Anyway, I know that not everyone who has tried to read Loos’ novel recently has loved it - but hear me out! Even if you don’t legitimately think it’s still funny today (and I do), I’d urge you to appreciate its uniqueness and innovation within the context of its time and as a critical part of a long and illustrious history of women being funny, and writing funny, when women have been historically and strenuously discouraged both from being funny and from writing.
In any case - we wouldn’t have many of the funny women and funny TV and funny pop culture that we do today without works like GPB and writers like Loos and those other pioneers like her. And that’s why this classic is Worth Restoring in the first place.
I should here mention that Happy Hour’s author, Marlowe Granados, knows far more about all this stuff than I do. She has a lot of essays and interviews online that you can check out, and is a bit of a scholar not only of women’s and women-centric and darkly humorous retro literature, but also of more recent pop culture, romantic comedies, etc. She names as a few direct influences writers like Loos, and Rona Jaffe - and Jean Rhys, whose protagonists’ influences I can also see in Isa.
But here I am AGAIN talking about this book like its sole merit is its meaningful literary heritage! The other thing is just that I enjoyed it, and the writing, so damn much! I’ve put some random quotes at the end of this so that you can get an idea of the Humour and the Tone.
As with Loos’ book and many good socially critical yet comedic works, its social criticism is lightly and artfully applied primarily around the privileged, (mostly) rich, (mostly) white, and/or (mostly) male patrons and benefactors of Isa and Gala and the hoity-toity scenes they haunt, and especially via the steady stream of microaggressions - sexist, racist, classist, the assumptions, underestimations, and misconceptions - that the heroines must routinely dodge and navigate in their efforts to tour NYC and feed themselves socially, culturally, and literally. (Preferably caviar.)
Also, Isa, like Lorelei Lee, is very self-aware and meta about what she is doing and the life she is living. If the many Gentlemen who routinely insist on comparing one’s appearance to that of Pocahontas can pay for a round of French 75s, what is to be gained by not availing oneself of this?
I guess I should say something about the To Plot or Not To Plot question. As in Loos’ book, plot’s a “spicy slice-of-life” kind of thing here, with no traditional central conflict, but rather a series of recounted events taking place during an adventurous trip (a summer sojourn in 2013 NYC in this case), gently framed at the beginning by the starting of a diary and at the end by the suggestion of the diary’s fate or rather what developments may follow from the diary’s having been kept. The diary functions as bootstraps, or I guess, stiletto straps.
The last thing I’d like to say is that I don’t get - nay, I even Disapprove Of - all the comparisons of this work to Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, HBO’s Girls, and the like. This book is simply nothing like any of those. We needn’t compare every single recent cultural product recounting the societal escapades of would-be fashionable younger women in NYC, any more than we need to compare everything dark and/or murder-y and scholastic to The Secret History.
These are now Vast Genre! Shall we endeavor to compare every single book about, say, Dysfunctional Family, or War? Stylish and/or often women-identifying people have been aiming to live it up in NYC since the beginning of time, and will hopefully continue to be able to do so, and thus culture reflects this. It is pointless and minimizing - a fool’s errand, really - to fruitlessly bundle together most recent cultural artifacts making any reference to this.
I’ve also seen comparisons to Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I kind of get what people are going for with this one in that it’s conceivable fans of one book may enjoy another. However, I think it’s important to note that the comparison on its face makes no sense at all. Don’t get me wrong: MYORAR is also one of my favorite novels ever. But it’s Completely Different! MYORAR is a (albeit darkly comic) novel of having reached a nadir of depression and nihilism, about the absolute meaninglessness and pointlessness of everything and about being impressed and inspired and interested by nothing whatever.
In contrast, Happy Hour is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of this. It’s in the tradition of the youthful adventure novel, the educational world tour novel, the Bildungsroman. Yes, there are subtle, fleeting traces of sadness and desperation, but it is a book about deliberately living and learning and exploring, chasing and finding pleasure and surprise, taking notice of and seizing the day (at least between noon and 4 AM) when and while you can. It’s a novel of exuberant and resourceful tuning in, not jaded and bereft checking out.
I mean, Isa and Gala would be the LAST to voluntarily sleep their lives away; indeed, they hardly sleep at all.
I’ll leave you with a few random quotes from the book, then. I wish you enjoyment!
*** *** ***
“He would not seem out of place in a Victorian oil painting, and his family owns several. He was known for making a lot of risky investments, and I was one of his favourites.”
“The taller one gestured towards me before sitting down, asking me, ‘Are you from Mauritius?’ I said, ‘No, but I can spell it.’”
“I have little patience for girls like Alice. She is always steering the conversation back to the subject of Her. It’s almost impressive. Like maybe you say that you are having a bad case of spring allergies, Alice will say, ‘Well I’ve never had allergies, but I did sneeze once.’”
“Ally was nice to me, probably to the extent she could be nice to anyone who is twenty-one.”
“They looked like what the word ‘bonehead’ is meant to describe.”
“She has a lot of what people consider ‘moral fibre,’ which simply means a variety of fears instilled in you when you’re young enough to be scared.”
“People have the funniest ideas. You can’t just enter a hierarchy; you have to demolish it.”
“Here I was doing whippets with a grown man; life really takes you anywhere.”
“I have been intrepid. I bought a copy of the New Yorker (which I had to go all the way to Brooklyn Heights to get) and highlighted all the interesting events listed. I showed Gala, and she pointed out one and said, ‘This one looks the most boring. That’ll be what you want.’ It was a talk with a French economic theorist who seemed quite popular and even had a bestselling book that, from what I read, got attention from literary circles. I think that is quite a feat; I don’t believe the economy is a popular subject.”
“I realize now, the older you get, the harder it is to be impressed because people make you feel ashamed of ever being impressed by anything at all. I keep many glowing remarks to myself because of this.”
“I asked him about his business, how long he had lived in the city, who his last girlfriend was—because most people in New York are happy to be invited to diatribe.”
“I already have plenty of names I don’t recognize in my phone, and I usually have to save them with an identifying noun. I can only faintly recall who ‘Todd Abyssinian Cat,’ ‘Hera White Boots,’ or ‘Cole Sculptor/Mediator’ are. If there is a finite capacity in one’s mind for names, I have surely reached my limit.”
“The voice said, ‘Things have been really boring since I last saw you. I think we should go on a date.’ I really could not place who it was, since I could have been having this same conversation with innumerable friends.”
“Gala described it as a glittery sheath and said of whomever it was from, ‘They know your favourite colour is sequins.’”
“The carpet was patterned with white, tangled hexagons against a royal blue background, conforming to an unwritten rule that all hotel carpets must be awful. It looked like a frat boy’s Times Square dream of Edith Wharton. In this way the hotel was very New York.”
“Everyone kept asking us what we were doing in New York, what we were working on, and what our general story was. When Gala told them we were doing ‘absolutely nothing,’ she was met with raised eyebrows. They would add, ‘Do you have internships at magazines?’ No one seemed to understand what Gala was saying, and I thought perhaps she wasn’t enunciating to their liking. I know she sometimes warbles. So I repeated emphatically, ‘Nothing! Nothing at all!’ After that, people were not so interested in telling us what they did.”
“These two were know-it-alls who knew very little.”
“There’s an immediate shock that comes when you realize a Scene is about to be made and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”
“I picked up a book of essays on cruelty in an effort to better myself. Just from reading, I can tell people are obsessed with themselves, even when they loathe themselves, because they’re charmed with how they do it.”
“I don’t think I have ever met a woman I wouldn’t consider formidable. My mother was just so. Being a young girl is always a cute trick. It leaves nothing to be desired and it is easy. I feel as though becoming a woman is like a long tradition of going through things and coming out strong, but I am tired and weary!”
“And it’s not that we dance to attract anyone to join us—rather the opposite. I am more comfortable being a Fixture than a Possibility.”
“I ran up the stairs to wake Gala because she has a true appreciation for department stores; she calls them Free Museums. She really sprang out of bed, which I have never seen her do.”
“I am highly educated in true sorrow, so I don’t succumb to silly criticism.”
“Lucian came downstairs in his Japanese-silk pyjamas and said ‘something must be happening’ because he has ‘never ever’ seen us awake before noon. That’s a lie. I’m always awake in the morning. I’m usually lying down with my eyes closed waiting for the appropriate time to wake up Gala.”
“Rich intellectuals are funny because they are accepting of dirt and nature. They leave their windows open without a screen and only have natural cleaning products. They filter their water using charcoal and leave their butter dish out. I don’t know how they get rid of any germs, but perhaps it is a marker of my upbringing that I think bleach is all-purpose.”
“Intellectuals are funny because they always think you mean more than you say, when sometimes I don’t mean anything at all.”
“We would’ve gone home, but putting a cap on an evening of adventure can be tough. It takes practice to have restraint, and we are not yet at an age to try it out.”
“It’s always better when I am forced to be in public rather than in bed deliberating everything I may have said or done—wondering whether this time I went a little too far, was a little too forthcoming, a little too much. I suppose I’m lucky I never feel that way normally. It’s just on these particular occasions the feeling becomes acute. Maybe it’s my comeuppance for everything else I do.”
“The only time girls can really shake those feelings is when they repeat the night to their friends. People take this ritual lightly, as though it has not been a tradition that has aided girls in regaining their bravery after every misstep for almost ever.”
November 16, 2024
In the current literary landscape, dominated by sad hot girl narrators who spend hundreds of pages wallowing in misery and revisiting their trauma, Happy Hour stands out like a poppy in a field of grass.
True to its title, the novel follows young socialite Isa as she and her friends hop from party to party, trying to make a name for themselves in the glitz and glamour of New York. Isa’s carefree attitude hides a tragic past that she refuses to grapple with, choosing to live in a perpetual present instead. She feigns nonchalance in the face of her precarious financial situation, fragile relationships, and uncertain future. Behind her bubbly façade, however, lays a witty and perceptive young woman who recounts her interactions with the city’s upper class in a tone by turns wry and sincere.
The story unfurls in a sequence of short vignettes, featuring a seemingly endless list of characters that you inevitably forget about only a handful of pages later. Most of them are nothing but background actors in our protagonist’s life, and only serve to highlight the stark contrast between their privileged lifestyle and her perpetual struggle to make ends meet. Isa’s exterior is hard to crack; the only person who can really see through it is her best friend Gala, a Bosnian refugee who shares her immigrant background and resulting sense of displacement. Their relationship was my favorite part of the book, and added some much needed emotional depth to a story that can otherwise feel a little superficial at times.
What really sets Happy Hour apart from other recent novels about the lives of disaffected young women, however, is its voice. Isa’s narration is light-hearted and spirited, sometimes almost forcefully so; she refuses to be brought down by her difficult circumstances, approaching life with a playful irony that helps her cope with the very pressing issues she must face. It’s refreshing to read about an intelligent female character who is determined to enjoy life as much as she can, without overindulging in self-pity. For this reason alone, I’m glad I discovered this book.
True to its title, the novel follows young socialite Isa as she and her friends hop from party to party, trying to make a name for themselves in the glitz and glamour of New York. Isa’s carefree attitude hides a tragic past that she refuses to grapple with, choosing to live in a perpetual present instead. She feigns nonchalance in the face of her precarious financial situation, fragile relationships, and uncertain future. Behind her bubbly façade, however, lays a witty and perceptive young woman who recounts her interactions with the city’s upper class in a tone by turns wry and sincere.
The story unfurls in a sequence of short vignettes, featuring a seemingly endless list of characters that you inevitably forget about only a handful of pages later. Most of them are nothing but background actors in our protagonist’s life, and only serve to highlight the stark contrast between their privileged lifestyle and her perpetual struggle to make ends meet. Isa’s exterior is hard to crack; the only person who can really see through it is her best friend Gala, a Bosnian refugee who shares her immigrant background and resulting sense of displacement. Their relationship was my favorite part of the book, and added some much needed emotional depth to a story that can otherwise feel a little superficial at times.
What really sets Happy Hour apart from other recent novels about the lives of disaffected young women, however, is its voice. Isa’s narration is light-hearted and spirited, sometimes almost forcefully so; she refuses to be brought down by her difficult circumstances, approaching life with a playful irony that helps her cope with the very pressing issues she must face. It’s refreshing to read about an intelligent female character who is determined to enjoy life as much as she can, without overindulging in self-pity. For this reason alone, I’m glad I discovered this book.
January 24, 2022
Endless drivel.
May 9, 2021
This book is like a French 75: light, intoxicating, and perfect. I rated it high because I too loved being a cheeky but strapped for cash party girl in New York at the age of 20 (Thank you to my benefactors). This book is a paean to charm, beauty, and frivolity—things I myself am quite passionate about. I loved young Isa, born to beguile, to seduce, to attract, and, in the final reckoning, to cause suffering in all those who sought their happiness in her. This one is for the little princesses of this stupid world!
February 24, 2022
Actually experienced pain trying to finish this book. Liked the digs at nyc elitists but ultimately so boring
October 7, 2021
So much potential, but ultimately disappointing. Happy Hour was marketed as “social criticism” yet the book is comprised of repetitive chapters depicting two fairly shallow friends hopping from hotel to bar to art gallery while attempting to hustle people for money on the side. There were glimpses of societal critique about academia, capitalism, and the party scene in New York, but they were often in the form of cliche outbursts and generalized homespun phrases. Happy Hour is My Year of Rest of Relaxation’s less mature younger sibling. Isa is reminiscent of the unnamed narrator, and Gala is Rava-esque.
At the same time, this book drags way too much to be a light read about French 75s and oysters. Characters dip in and out, and I was left without an attachment to the plot or any of the characters (including the main ones). This book is trying to be two things — and ends up being neither.
However, I’m excited to read what Granados writes next. She gets a bonus star for her compelling and acerbic writing. Hopefully her next book has more of a plot and is more nuanced in it’s portrayal of glamor and class.
At the same time, this book drags way too much to be a light read about French 75s and oysters. Characters dip in and out, and I was left without an attachment to the plot or any of the characters (including the main ones). This book is trying to be two things — and ends up being neither.
However, I’m excited to read what Granados writes next. She gets a bonus star for her compelling and acerbic writing. Hopefully her next book has more of a plot and is more nuanced in it’s portrayal of glamor and class.
August 8, 2022
The more i read this genre, the more I find it vapid. Another wanna be twenty something filled with ennui, hanging out with her friend that she doesn't even like much and trying to make her ends meet while keeping her insta aesthetics “fun and exciting”. God, what is this generation even upto?
2/5 ✨
2/5 ✨
December 6, 2021
I cannot bear how bad this book is.
October 19, 2022
I don't know what to call this type of story more than a "Sally Rooney" kind of feel. Unlikable characters galore yet it was oddly easy getting invested in even if there wasn't much plot. Oddly compelling and definitely intrigued to read more from Marlowe Granados
April 25, 2023
so boring. a book about absolutely nothing.
May 22, 2022
In my opinion, books either need to have no plot or no character development, but not both simultaneously. Unfortunately, this book has virtually no plot and absolutely no character development. The main characters are unliklable and annoying. There’s so many characters with such little background on each that I started confusing them (especially the men). I enjoyed the author’s writing style and that’s about it.
April 10, 2023
No plot, just vibes. Like getting thrown in an episode of Gossip Girl with no Gossip Girl, just narcissistic New Yorkers.
November 22, 2022
a book about nothing, and yet still fun to read: happy hour follows isa and gala who embark on a hot girl summer in new york city with a minimal budget between them as they spend their days selling clothes at a market stall and their nights partying in the city's social scene, using their beauty and the gift of manipulation to gain the results they need and want.
to sum the novel up would be to compare it to sex and the city meets gossip girl meets what tiktok believes to be societal criticism through the eyes of unlikable young women we relate to on the basis of flaws and what this means to our individual character. with that, whether this is good or bad is up to your own interpretation. as i said, it’s fun, and certainly has charm, but do not expect it to be your next favourite read.
2.5 stars!
to sum the novel up would be to compare it to sex and the city meets gossip girl meets what tiktok believes to be societal criticism through the eyes of unlikable young women we relate to on the basis of flaws and what this means to our individual character. with that, whether this is good or bad is up to your own interpretation. as i said, it’s fun, and certainly has charm, but do not expect it to be your next favourite read.
2.5 stars!
October 31, 2021
you're perfect and I love you
July 20, 2024
absolutely nothing happened in this book. i loved it.
February 1, 2023
Happy Hour felt like stretching after a long time cooped up. The writing was indulgent and fast paced; Isa and her friend Gala arrive in New York City for the summer, with some clothes to sell at weekend markets and not much else. They know an incredible amount of people for not being from the city, and meet a lot more. Isa seems incredibly well-lived and travelled despite being only 21 in a way that seems perhaps unrealistic (but, again, it felt indulgent). This book was a slice-of-life story, without any real plot, which I truly love in a book. I acknowledge it probably isn’t for me, but I adored it.
December 15, 2021
This is exactly my type of book: a wry, Moshfeghian female protagonist in her 20s, navigating her way through a hedonistic, cosmopolitan New York City summer with a few dollars to her name. So obviously it gets five stars. If you read and liked: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, The Bell Jar or Sweetbitter you would probably like this - in fact you might like it more! Zero plot, just vibes. Languid, warm, luxurious and seethingly sharp.
Granados’ debut is even more raw and vulnerable when you see Isa as a stand in for the author. This fiction is a thinky veiled retelling of her own, evidenced through the book’s journalistic style and narrative voice. It’s incredibly brave and a pleasure to read. Isa, our protagonist, is valorous and confident and has the self-assurance and naivete needed to make it in the cruel city. Granados writes with a distinct voice and shrewd social commentary, her protagonist is very endearing - perhaps unlike Moshfegh - and her characterisations are so enjoyable.
Will definitely eagerly read her next.
Thanks to NetGalley and Verso for the advanced readers copy.
“And for me, where I really belong is almost never where people find me. That's something I often think about when I am met with hostility. It is never that I have done anything to warrant it; it's that I'm simply
there."
When we were younger, everything for the first timealways felt the best, or at least the Most, and sometimes getting older feels like striking the same chord and it sounding different.
Being unattached is exhausting. I see it all the time. Whenever a woman comes into a room and people find out she has a significant other, it suddenly takes the sting out of her. She is no longer a threat. I don't know why, but that's how it is. Without that reassurance, people look at you like you're some kind of rogue, capable of doing anything. Dangerous, unpredictable, and suspicious. Though it can be tiring, I think it's the most powerful
position to be in. I often find myself there.
Everyone knows that in New York no one helps you
when you have an air of desperation. Like grief, it feels
contagious. It starts with a sedate fever, but it moves
quickly, depleting you of all logic or common sense.
Socially, it can be a real stigma.
Beauty is a funny thing. It fools you into thinking you
like someone when really all you want is to possess
them. Ultimately, I guess that's what desire is.
Something I find so beautiful should be mine!
I don’t exist for other people’s curiosity, but sometimes it feels that way. One can be seen and then unseen just a quickly.
The less time spent in public, the safer girls feel. That’s not incidental; the world was built that way.
Whenever I’m on the subway or walking in the street alone, there’s a constant feeling of being in display. It’s a feeling I’ve never felt so strongly anywhere else.
Is it wrong to think of pain as quanitifiable? If it is not in quantities, how can we digest it? How does it move through our bodies without us knowing its size?
Rage is funny because letting it out leaves you feeling more powerless than you were to start with.
Sometimes when you think of a friendship, you wonder how it ever started and what keeps it together. Today, I couldn't think of any reason but Memories. Unmoored and drifting,
we were only holding on to each other for the sake of a shared history. What else bonded us? A general willingness to not discuss things. To not pry, to know that to ask would hurt each other, so sometimes skimming the surface is the best thing a friend can do.
Sometimes I think I must be attached to reality by a thin string.
Grief doesn't always start with death. It can come
before that, and once it starts, there is no end in sight.
We will all be touched by death at some point. I try to
keep it at bay as best as I can. People carry heaviness
with them, and this is my weight. I cannot get up to go
to the bathroom or get a glass of water. My body sinks
into the mattress like cement. This time of year, I feel
especially tired. Since she's been gone, the days keep
coming, one after the other. If time can go on, I can
too. Each day can carry me on its wave till months and
years have passed.
I have always given a convincing performance.
Do children ever know if their mothers are beautiful? I could never tell; she was too familiar.
It’s funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You’d think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to see you through it.
I am alone in certain ways that I do not admit to strangers because why should I?
Grief is a currency I will not use. I would give up all my
chips if I could. Why won't anyone take them? I can
never stand the looks some people give, an empty
gesture of consolation I never wanted in the first place.
When I do tell people, I say it quickly, as though it's an
afterthought. I've never found use in talking about
grief with anyone. Even the people you expect to be a
comfort always disappoint.
Death makes people uncomfortable because there is
never a thing to say to make it better, and I am not one
to inconvenience someone else in their experience of
the world. People treat grief as though it is contagious,
like it must be isolated, snuffed out, and forgotten in
those that suffer from it. Whenever I catch people on
the empathetic end of a night of drinking, they look at
me and say, "I don't know how you do it." I am not
strong! I want to tell them. I am simply enduring.
Mothers hug me with an intuition of what I lack, and I
am thankful for that. I love them for it.
Resilience is key. It would be nice if whenever someone said, “I love you,” it meant, “Everything will be fine.” It’s all reassurance anyway.
Our capacity for appreciating art is limited to what we find beautiful.
Sure, as quickly as things come into our possession, they can be taken away. Was life really that different with or without these things?
How can you ever really know someone? People change and are in a constant state of revealing themselves. To think you know everything about someone is to leave yourself vulnerable to surprise.
And in the end I know I am passionate about glamour-because it is illusive, hard to define, yet identifiable. How are we to go through life without the chance at one more stint of glamour?
I do wonder whether my memories should stay only
mine, or have they ever been? Each time I tell someone
a story over a watery Pernod, it opens that someone to the possibility of the memory; that's why I adore
talking. Then maybe the stories really are mine, not
because they happened to me but because of the
indelible details I give. Maybe it is the how that makes
them valuable.
Granados’ debut is even more raw and vulnerable when you see Isa as a stand in for the author. This fiction is a thinky veiled retelling of her own, evidenced through the book’s journalistic style and narrative voice. It’s incredibly brave and a pleasure to read. Isa, our protagonist, is valorous and confident and has the self-assurance and naivete needed to make it in the cruel city. Granados writes with a distinct voice and shrewd social commentary, her protagonist is very endearing - perhaps unlike Moshfegh - and her characterisations are so enjoyable.
Will definitely eagerly read her next.
Thanks to NetGalley and Verso for the advanced readers copy.
“And for me, where I really belong is almost never where people find me. That's something I often think about when I am met with hostility. It is never that I have done anything to warrant it; it's that I'm simply
there."
When we were younger, everything for the first timealways felt the best, or at least the Most, and sometimes getting older feels like striking the same chord and it sounding different.
Being unattached is exhausting. I see it all the time. Whenever a woman comes into a room and people find out she has a significant other, it suddenly takes the sting out of her. She is no longer a threat. I don't know why, but that's how it is. Without that reassurance, people look at you like you're some kind of rogue, capable of doing anything. Dangerous, unpredictable, and suspicious. Though it can be tiring, I think it's the most powerful
position to be in. I often find myself there.
Everyone knows that in New York no one helps you
when you have an air of desperation. Like grief, it feels
contagious. It starts with a sedate fever, but it moves
quickly, depleting you of all logic or common sense.
Socially, it can be a real stigma.
Beauty is a funny thing. It fools you into thinking you
like someone when really all you want is to possess
them. Ultimately, I guess that's what desire is.
Something I find so beautiful should be mine!
I don’t exist for other people’s curiosity, but sometimes it feels that way. One can be seen and then unseen just a quickly.
The less time spent in public, the safer girls feel. That’s not incidental; the world was built that way.
Whenever I’m on the subway or walking in the street alone, there’s a constant feeling of being in display. It’s a feeling I’ve never felt so strongly anywhere else.
Is it wrong to think of pain as quanitifiable? If it is not in quantities, how can we digest it? How does it move through our bodies without us knowing its size?
Rage is funny because letting it out leaves you feeling more powerless than you were to start with.
Sometimes when you think of a friendship, you wonder how it ever started and what keeps it together. Today, I couldn't think of any reason but Memories. Unmoored and drifting,
we were only holding on to each other for the sake of a shared history. What else bonded us? A general willingness to not discuss things. To not pry, to know that to ask would hurt each other, so sometimes skimming the surface is the best thing a friend can do.
Sometimes I think I must be attached to reality by a thin string.
Grief doesn't always start with death. It can come
before that, and once it starts, there is no end in sight.
We will all be touched by death at some point. I try to
keep it at bay as best as I can. People carry heaviness
with them, and this is my weight. I cannot get up to go
to the bathroom or get a glass of water. My body sinks
into the mattress like cement. This time of year, I feel
especially tired. Since she's been gone, the days keep
coming, one after the other. If time can go on, I can
too. Each day can carry me on its wave till months and
years have passed.
I have always given a convincing performance.
Do children ever know if their mothers are beautiful? I could never tell; she was too familiar.
It’s funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You’d think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to see you through it.
I am alone in certain ways that I do not admit to strangers because why should I?
Grief is a currency I will not use. I would give up all my
chips if I could. Why won't anyone take them? I can
never stand the looks some people give, an empty
gesture of consolation I never wanted in the first place.
When I do tell people, I say it quickly, as though it's an
afterthought. I've never found use in talking about
grief with anyone. Even the people you expect to be a
comfort always disappoint.
Death makes people uncomfortable because there is
never a thing to say to make it better, and I am not one
to inconvenience someone else in their experience of
the world. People treat grief as though it is contagious,
like it must be isolated, snuffed out, and forgotten in
those that suffer from it. Whenever I catch people on
the empathetic end of a night of drinking, they look at
me and say, "I don't know how you do it." I am not
strong! I want to tell them. I am simply enduring.
Mothers hug me with an intuition of what I lack, and I
am thankful for that. I love them for it.
Resilience is key. It would be nice if whenever someone said, “I love you,” it meant, “Everything will be fine.” It’s all reassurance anyway.
Our capacity for appreciating art is limited to what we find beautiful.
Sure, as quickly as things come into our possession, they can be taken away. Was life really that different with or without these things?
How can you ever really know someone? People change and are in a constant state of revealing themselves. To think you know everything about someone is to leave yourself vulnerable to surprise.
And in the end I know I am passionate about glamour-because it is illusive, hard to define, yet identifiable. How are we to go through life without the chance at one more stint of glamour?
I do wonder whether my memories should stay only
mine, or have they ever been? Each time I tell someone
a story over a watery Pernod, it opens that someone to the possibility of the memory; that's why I adore
talking. Then maybe the stories really are mine, not
because they happened to me but because of the
indelible details I give. Maybe it is the how that makes
them valuable.
July 23, 2023
party girls are boring & exhausting (they're probably not but this book definitely was)
December 12, 2020
I use the word "glorious" a lot in reviews, but there's just something about this book that demands I use it again, because glorious is exactly what this is. The writing is brilliant; there's an infectious confidence in every line (mostly thanks to the infectiously confident, wonderfully human Isa) that makes this book just burst with life. Bright and beautiful, witty and wise, this book isn't trying to be or do anything spectacular, it just is (and that's what makes it spectacular anyway). There's a gorgeous freedom to it, but it's a freedom not because of certain things, but despite them; it just felt like a book about being young and human and alive in the sweltering heat of a New York City summer. It was special, and I loved it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,213 reviews