An age-gap relationship between two aspiring writers acts as the vessel through which modern loneliness, addiction, love and ambition are heartwrenchingly explored, in this penetrating new novel by Jem Calder.
In a crowded, noisy bar in London a man and a woman meet, awkwardly. Chuck, 35, is no longer engaged to his long-term girlfriend Sarah. He makes a comfortable living as a copywriter, but increasingly struggles to balance work with his alcoholism and the novel he has not quite given up on writing. Joey, 23, barely has a foothold in the city but her crippling self-doubts are somehow stilled by her steady dedication to her vocation as an apprentice poet. Their ensuing relationship stutters through an anti-pastoral landscape of vaguely aspirational coffee shops, bars, and purpose-built apartment blocks.
Steeped in loneliness, told with exquisite sensitivity and humour, I Want You to be Happy is excruciating at times: we follow Calder’s lovers as they flail and stall, wincing at every missed opportunity, every moment of self-delusion and self-sabotage. The novel’s mobile, third-person narrator stays meticulously close to Chuck and Joey, and gradually the atmosphere of attentive noticing reveals itself as something wholly different from “unflinching”—the narrative gaze is rather one of loyalty, care, and compassion for the lovers. Like a strange, sad love ballad, their story is ever-so-lightly dusted with crystals of beauty and hope that dissolve sweetly on the page. The result is a debut novel that reads like an instant classic.