Are You Happy?

Nine masterful stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the spectrum of violence in America-and in American families-against women and the LGBTQ+ community.

A collection filled with surprise, dark humor, and deep compassion, from the author of The Bigness of the World, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.

"Once I read the first story in Are You Happy?, I put aside everything else to savor the rest. This is a wise collection, capturing its characters swimming upstream to encounter their fates. With vivid and compassionate prose that explores the countless ways we betray and then rediscover ourselves,LoriOstlund reminds us of the vitality of the genre." -Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Play for the End of the World and A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness

Nine exquisite stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence that looms daily over women and the LGBTQ+ community.

An aspiring veterinarian survives a plane crash and starts life over in California. A woman mourns the loss of her childhood friend's innocence and rethinks justice. A queer teacher's sense of safety in the classroom is destroyed. With settings ranging from small-town Minnesota to New Mexico, from bars and bedrooms to a furniture store and a community college, Are You Happy? casts a spotlight on people who try-and often fail-to make peace with their pasts while navigating their present relationships and notions of self. In prose that is evocative and restrained, unpredictable and masterful, Lori Ostlund offers a darkly humorous and compassionate examination of America's preoccupation with loneliness, happiness, guns, and violence.