Are You Happy Now? - Hanna Jameson

A novel about another life-threatening epidemic spreading panic and death among the population is probably the last thing you want to read now. Or the next to last thing maybe. The last thing you probably want to read is a novel about an epidemic resembling catatonic depression spreading among the Millennial generation. You might think that, but really you should be intrigued and Hanna Jameson does a terrific job of ensuring that she handles it in an exciting way, showing how there are many other ways that life can suddenly and totally unexpectedly come off the rails.

It seemed like a typically raucous end to a wedding reception when Yun meets Emory; everyone is drunk, taking full advantage of the free bar, a fight has started and the DJ is not quite hitting the right notes to hold the happy occasion together. One person however has a more violent reaction that no-one is expecting when she sits down on the dancefloor and appears to fall into an unresponsive catatonic state, but screams when anyone tries to touch her. Rose is taken to hospital, but tests fail to find any drugs in her system and there is no medical history of depression recorded. When Rose fails to recover and dies a few weeks later, concern spreads as more instances of this strange behaviour are reported in America and then across the world.

Emory, a freelance reporter, having witnessed what is thought to be patient zero, starts investigating the phenomenon and discovers that dozens of similar cases have been identified almost simultaneously at a music festival in Hunter Mountain. As reports gradually start coming in from all over the world, no-one seems any closer to understanding what is happening. Is it another pandemic? A new disease? A biological agent? It definitely appears to be something contagious, affecting people in close proximity to other cases, but it doesn't appear to have affect anyone else at Mike and Laura's wedding. The term Pervasive Refusal Syndrome starts getting applied, as no one knows if it's voluntary or something else. "Maybe, somehow, we've brought this on ourselves".

There's the key there to Are You Happy Now?, the title providing a further insight or clue. We are dealing with a particular age group here, just heading into their thirties, most of them involved in arts or creative careers, musicians and dancers, teachers or writers. There are four main figures whose lives are entangled and whose lives are affected by the strange mood surrounding the increasing number of deaths and the impact this has on society and their careers. Emory has residual guilt about Rose and, as a journalist reporting what is happening, feels in some way responsible for others following her 'example'. Andrew is getting divorced, Yun is still hung up on his last girlfriend and, as a musician and DJ, worried about work opportunities and keeping an apartment. Fin, a young dancer then appears on the scene, another who happened to be at the ill-fated wedding reception.

Yun seems particularly unstable and incapable of dealing with what is happening, feeling his life falling apart, but all of them are wondering whether they will make it and do whatever it takes to achieve happiness and fulfillment in their lives, find exactly who they are and whether they can live as they choose, or whether the world has other plans for them. The world is certainly changing and younger people than them are dying, seeming to give up before they have even started to live.

Now, this can be as annoying as it sounds if you aren't terribly sympathetic to irritatingly self-obsessed, oat latte drinking, bread avoiding, caffeine intolerant late-twenty-to-thirty-somethings discontented with relationships, confused about their sexuality, agonising about where they fit in and where they are going in life. On the other hand, Are You Happy Now? captures the nature and concerns of that age group very well, with authentic responses to relevant issues today. You might not like the way the modern world is, but this is what we have to deal with and there are undoubtedly more pressures than ever on those from the Millennial generation.

As flawed/selfish/annoying as some of the characters might be, Hanna Jameson nonetheless treats them all realistically, putting them through deep emotional situations and frank exchanges with authentic dialogue that makes no effort to portray them in any other light than real people with their own problems and issues. There is no special pleading for how difficult these examples of their generation find adjusting to the rapidly changing world that threatens their sense of security. It does in fact suggest that, despite the apparent privileges they might have enjoyed, they are less capable of dealing with the challenges life throws their way. Or perhaps not less capable, but they are conditioned by life in a way that makes it harder to adjust when something challenges their principles and beliefs, or ideal of who they are. 

There's a good balance here then between the science-fiction epidemic premise and an underlying reality that everyone can relate to to one extent or another, of a world that is changing more quickly than we can keep up with emotionally and indeed financially. Whether the spread of a condition that looks like near-catatonic depression comes from outside or from deeper inside, it is nonetheless a clever way of looking at the world where people are increasingly feeling a lack of control, where they begin to feel that their lives have come to a dead end. The sense of impending doom for humanity is all around, and that might not be pleasant to read about in Are You Happy Now?, but it's something that we will all have to face up to eventually.

Reading notes: Are You Happy Now? by Hanna Jameson will be published by Penguin Viking on the 2nd February 2023. This review was prepared on the 19th November 2022 from an advance eBook proof, so won't be published until closer to the publication date, but who knows that the book might not feel even more relevant and premonitory by the time we get there. My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance proof copy for review.