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A review by lukenotjohn
Now We Will Be Happy by Amina Gautier
5.0
For the past two years, I have been living in a predominantly Puerto Rican (and Dominican) neighborhood of North Philly, and I can't imagine encountering a book that tops this one in capturing the sights, smells, tastes (attention to food is tremendously well done in this book, critically!), sounds, and more importantly lives -full of highs and lows- that exist here. Gautier is simply masterful at her craft, and this read as a top-level exploration, however brief they may be, into life here and within PR culture in all its beautiful and heartbreaking complexity and fullness. And I especially appreciate that she was willing to go dark and even despairing for some stories, resisting an urge to tell a more optimistic but ultimately incomplete half-truth that would have been more appeasing, yet shallow. Every single character felt true and real, moving through their chapter in organic and subtly meaningful ways.
Perhaps what I appreciated most about this book (beyond my own bias for the ways it speaks to the specific context I live in now and the friends I have here, which is huge) is the admirable restraint it shows all the way through. As far as I can remember , we see no climaxes here - we see what precedes and follows the most catalyzing moments in these characters lives, the build-ups and come-downs. Gautier allows and challenges her readers to imagine to "big moments" as they would unfold, the sexy and exciting ones most writers are salivating to write. I think it's such a beautiful gift of short story to be able to fade to black before that, to hold back and ultimately refuse to go there for us. In doing so, it makes these characters and their lives achingly real, and where a lesser writer may fall into mundane blandness, Gautier offers such subtle, nuanced complexity throughout those moments - which is, of course, how real life is.
Perhaps what I appreciated most about this book (beyond my own bias for the ways it speaks to the specific context I live in now and the friends I have here, which is huge) is the admirable restraint it shows all the way through. As far as I can remember , we see no climaxes here - we see what precedes and follows the most catalyzing moments in these characters lives, the build-ups and come-downs. Gautier allows and challenges her readers to imagine to "big moments" as they would unfold, the sexy and exciting ones most writers are salivating to write. I think it's such a beautiful gift of short story to be able to fade to black before that, to hold back and ultimately refuse to go there for us. In doing so, it makes these characters and their lives achingly real, and where a lesser writer may fall into mundane blandness, Gautier offers such subtle, nuanced complexity throughout those moments - which is, of course, how real life is.