Happy All the Time - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Laurie Colwin (Paperback)

About the Book

This sparkling novel about how four sane, intelligent, and good-hearted people manage to find love in spite of themselves abounds in good lines, aphorisms, advice to both the loved and the lovelorn ("The New York Times").

Book Synopsis

A modern classic first published in 1978 that is as much a sophisticated romantic comedy about the love between two partners as it is a novel about the powerful bonds shared by family members, friends, colleagues and confidants.

"A funny, loving, celebratory book in which everything is perfect." --The Boston Globe

Guido and Vincent, best friends (and third cousins), aren't expecting to fall head-over-heels in love, but that is exactly what happens. Guido is smitten with Holly, a dazzling young woman who chafes at the idea of complacency, while Vincent falls for Misty, a work colleague with an acerbic sense of humor who seems as uninterested in romance as she is in Vincent (at first). In the months that follow, both couples will experience the rituals of courtship, jealousy, estrangement, family entanglements, and other perils of the heart as they try to find love in spite of themselves.

Colwin is a master of portraying the messiness of life: here, in hilarious and endearing prose, she follows these two improbable pairs, and their families, as they navigate and ultimately find happiness together--not all the time, but for most of it.

With a foreword by Katherine Heiny, author of Early Morning Riser.

Review Quotes

"A jewel of romantic comedy. . . . A comedy of manners that reminds us that manners are comic and should be enjoyed as such. . . . This giddy courtship novel features Misty Berkowitz, Colwin's most memorable creation -- think Larry David, but with a secretly vulnerable, generous heart." --The New York Times

"Shimmering, funny. It made everything in my life seem a whole lot better." --Cosmopolitan

"A pleasure ... endless surprises and ultimately boundless joy ... It would be difficult not to enjoy it all." --The New Yorker

"A funny, loving, celebratory book in which everything is perfect." --The Boston Globe

"A wise, bighearted book by a wise, bighearted writer. A deft and funny one, too." --The Washington Post

"Merry and bright and tender, written in exquisitely balanced sentences that taste just right. Comparison with Jane Austen is not out of order." --New York Post

"Laurie Colwin was the best kind of master: human and humorous, full of wisdom and love. When am I happy all the time? When I have a stack of Laurie Colwin books beside me." --Emma Straub, bestselling author of All Adults Here

"How is it I hadn't heard of Happy All the Time until now? What a breezy, witty, nutty book. It's charm distilled." --Maria Semple, bestselling author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette

"An elegant, fresh, funny tale of four people in love. There's electricity here. . . . Pure delight." --The Village Voice

"Colwin's canny Manhattan pastorale strikes me as at least as much fun to read as Sense and Sensibility." --Newsweek

"Laurie Colwin's great subject was happiness--whether romantic, familial, domestic, or culinary--and she managed to write about it with both élan and emotional depth. . . . How wonderful it is that her books are still with us." --Christian Science Monitor

"Luminous . . . a book that lingers sweetly and hilariously in the memory." --The Dallas Morning News

"Seriously wise, seriously wonderful, seriously comic--your life will be richer for it." --Katherine Heiny

About the Author

LAURIE COLWIN is the author of five novels--Happy All the Time; Family Happiness; Goodbye Without Leaving; A Big Storm Knocked It Over; and Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object--three collections of short stories--Passion and Affect; The Lone Pilgrim; and Another Marvelous Thing--and two collections of essays, Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. Colwin died in 1992.