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Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

Literary fiction

Happy All the Time

by Laurie Colwin

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Quick take

Through boredom, jealousy, estrangement, and all life’s other pitfalls, two young couples learn that love finds a way.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Romance

    Romance

  • Illustrated icon, Light_Read

    Light read

  • Illustrated icon, LOL

    LOL

  • Illustrated icon, NYC

    NYC

Synopsis

Guido and Vincent are childhood best friends—third cousins, really—living in Cambridge and dreaming about their futures. Guido plans to write poetry while Vincent feels confident he will win a Nobel prize for physics. When Guido spots Holly while exiting a museum, he can immediately sense that she will be difficult, quirky, and hard to live with. He loves her on sight. Vincent, open-minded and cheerful, meets Misty at work. Though she is a bored and misanthropic brunette, he finds himself desperate to know her. Through courtship, jealousy, estrangement, and other perils, Happy All the Time follows four sane, intelligent, and good-intentioned people who manage to find love in spite of themselves.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Happy All the Time.

Happy All the Time

CHAPTER 1

Guido Morris and Vincent Cardworthy were third cousins. No one remembered which Morris had married which Cardworthy, and no one cared except at large family gatherings when this topic was introduced and subjected to the benign opinions of all. Vincent and Guido had been friends since babyhood. They had been strolled together in the same pram and as boys were often brought together, either at the Cardworthy house in Petrie, Connecticut, or at the Morris’s in Boston to play marbles, climb trees, and set off cherry bombs in trash cans and mailboxes. As teenagers, they drank beer in hiding and practiced smoking Guido’s father’s cigars, which did not make them sick, but happy. As adults, they both loved a good cigar.

At college they fooled around, spent money, and wondered what would become of them when they grew up. Guido intended to write poetry in heroic couplets and Vincent thought he might eventually win the Nobel Prize for physics.

In their late twenties they found themselves together again in Cambridge. Guido had gone to law school, had put in several years at a Wall Street law firm and had discovered that his heart was not in his work, and so he had come back to graduate school to study Romance languages and literature. He was old for a graduate student, but he had decided to give himself a few years of useless pleasure before the true responsibilities of adulthood set upon him.

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Why I love it

One of the best parts of being on Book of the Month’s Editorial Team is sharing with you, our members, a book or author you might not have encountered before. While we usually give this to you in the form of the best new releases, every once in a while, something different sneaks up on us. Next in our series from the late Laurie Colwin, an under-the-radar talent we’re shining a brand new spotlight on, is Happy All the Time.

Using a powerful and unique voice to highlight the minutiae of domestic life, Colwin wrote a variety of fiction and nonfiction until her unexpected death in 1992. Her work is character-driven but never boring—each page is steeped in drama, humor, and sheer life. While Colwin wrote in and about a time decades ago, her singular ability to capture the human experience makes her work timeless. Book of the Month believes that Laurie Colwin still has a story to tell a new generation of readers, and so we wanted to give our members a chance to step into her quirky, relatable world.

Book of the Month has selected three books that capture the essence of Colwin’s talent. Happy All the Time is the second book we are featuring of Laurie’s (be sure to check out Family Happiness), a romantic comedy that cuts a layer deeper, following the marriages and love affairs of two couples living in New York City.

And keep an eye out in subsequent months for more from the great Laurie Colwin.

Other books by Laurie Colwin

Member ratings (186)

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Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards