Happiness Falls
Ratings48
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings48
Average rating3.7
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • When a father goes missing, his family’s desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another in this thrilling page-turner, a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.
OPRAH DAILY’S #1 NOVEL OF THE YEAR • ONE OF PEOPLE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A WASHINGTON POST, BOOKPAGE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, NEW YORK POST, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, BOOK RIOT, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, REAL SIMPLE, CRIMEREADS, AND SHE READS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Belletrist Book Club Pick • Finalist for the New American Voices Award • “This is a story with so many twists and turns I was riveted through the last page.”—Jodi Picoult
“A brilliant, satisfying, compassionate mystery that is as much about language and storytelling as it is about a missing father. I loved this book.”—Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“I fell in love with the fascinating, brilliant family at the center of this riveting book.”—Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful
“We didn’t call the police right away.” Those are the electric first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.
Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.
What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut, Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing-person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.
Reviews with the most likes.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book. Angie Kim's Happiness Falls is an exploration of family and of how far are we willing to go for them. This book combines elements of mystery, delves into family dynamics, disability, and touches on the concept of happiness. While it falls slightly short for me in its final pages, it's still a compelling read.
Throughout the story we follow Mia who is both an unreliable narrator and emotional anchor. In the initial chapters, Mia's scattered thoughts and wavering perceptions piqued my interest. The revelation of her doubt about her own memories adds an intriguing dimension at the beginning of the book, explaining the scattered nature of her narrative voice, and setting us up for the uncertainty that is to come.
Mia's younger brother, Eugene, is autistic, and right from the start of the book, we know that he has witnessed something significant happen to his father. At a young age Eugene was diagnosed with Angelman syndrome, also known as the “Happiness Syndrome,” and has had a difficult time communicating, especially with his family. We can tell that the author has done a lot of research on this topic as she goes on to portray Angelman with sensitivity and authenticity. This portrayal not only provides insight into the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities but also serves as a means of understanding Eugene's experience and his family's bonds surrounding his condition.
The author's use of footnotes adds an extra layer to the narrative, as it helps to bridge cultural gaps and helps us get to know the families' Korean background and upbringing; a touch of realism is at play against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic; and the concept of the “Happiness Quotient” also becomes significant and a way of understanding the story, urging the characters, specifically Mia, to confront her own perceptions of happiness.
The narrative lost me a few times as it ventured into detailed explanations including quantitative equations and formulas. While they helped us to understand Mia's and her father's thought processes, the mathematical details occasionally confused and even made me bored. In addition, the way the book resolves itself felt sudden and a bit convenient for me and left some parts of the book unexplained and not fully explored. I understand that this may have been a way for the author to reunite the family collectively in their mission to save Eugene, but it left questions unanswered that, as a reader, I just desperately wanted answers to.
In conclusion, Happiness Falls is a story that is unlike a typical mystery. I went into it thinking this was a thriller/mystery and I came out feeling like it was more about family, and the different, sometimes complicated, dynamics within.
I'm giving this book 4 stars
This book promotes methods of nonverbal communication known as “Rapid Prompt Method” or “Spelling to Communicate”. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's official position is that “use of the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) is not recommended because of prompt dependency and the lack of scientific validity”. There just isn't any evidence that it's actually the individuals and not the facilitators doing the communicating (see: ideomotor effect). Now there are certainly some people that have trouble with speech and can communicate in other ways, but the case of Eugene in the book going from essentially zero communication to complex sentences and writing poetry is too fantastical to believe. I kept expecting the book to have some twist that actually no, it wasn't him, but sadly that wasn't the conclusion. There are some obvious red flags with these methods, e.g. why does it require a human to hold the letterboard vs. just having it stationary? Why does it only work with certain facilitators? Indeed these are even present in the book itself, yet they seem to be ignored by the author/narrator by the end.
The initial part of the book I thought was pretty good, comparable to Miracle Creek. The mystery of the father's disappearance and the finding of different hints was intriguing. But this all fell apart by the end and turned into some kind of advertisement for these unsupported “communication” methods. The ending was very unsatisfying as a result.
See this article for more info on this:
https://www.asha.org/slp/asha-warns-against-rapid-prompting-method-or-spelling-to-communicate/
This book was an entertaining read, and it was my first novel from her that I read. The characters were pretty interesting, and I was on my toes trying to figure out what happened with the dad. I can't wait to hear more of her works.
