Book description
With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados's stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City
Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Happy Hour as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This is a gorgeously written book about two best friends doing nothing in particular. Isa and Gala arrive in New York City intertwined and allied.
They whirl through all the requisite stops of the party girl layabout lifestyle. I was fascinated by the friendship’s closeness; Isa and Gala know each other’s quirks and fears in staggering intimacy. They function as a unit, as a “we.” Isa’s aimlessly wandering through life, but she isn’t in it alone, and that’s comforting to me.
Together, Isa and Gala turn aimlessness into freedom. It’s a detail-packed, slow-burning portrait of how we build identity together,…
From Sarah's list on complex, chaotic female friendships.
Isa, the narrator of Happy Hour, and her best friend Gala are recent transplants for New York City, undocumented, and working whatever under-the-table job they can find to make next month’s rent while balancing their main pastime: socializing.
Granados is an expert at portraying how young women find and wield whatever power they can access, whether through their beauty, their sense of humor, or the clear-eyed vision of the social machinations around them.
From Julia's list on women grinding their way through late capitalism.
If you love Happy Hour...
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A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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