Book cover of Something Happened

Book description

Bob Slocum was a promising executive. He had an attractive wife, three children, a nice house, and as many mistresses as he desired. His life was settled and ordered; he had conformed and society demanded he be happy - or at least pretend to be, But the pretence was becoming…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Something Happened as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I studied with Joe Heller at City College in New York, earned my MA in Creative Writing under his tutelage.

Catch-22 is his most well-known and celebrated work, of course; nevertheless, I consider his second novel, Something Happened, his deeply unsettling portrait of Bob Slocum, a mid-level executive in a disintegrating marriage and estranged from his children who is navigating the minefield of his corporate life, and the devastating anxiety, soul-numbing alienation and paralyzing dread his journey produces that bears fruit at last in the tragedy he has expected and feared and sought desperately to avoid for so long,…

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Hope, Laughter, Survival on the Refugee Trail by Eileen Kay,

Dramatic true story with a wacky sense of humor.

Retired English teacher in Budapest meets foreign medical students fleeing the war in Ukraine, producing a sweet and unlikely friendship, spicy soup, and wicked joking. A sense of humor, however dark, can keep us from despair.

Sample heroes: there was the…

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