The nine short fictions in Are You Happy?, the third book by Lori Ostlund (The Bigness of the World), form a stunning investigation into how violence and family dysfunction reverberate.
"The Peeping Toms" and "The Stalker" are a knockout pair featuring Albuquerque lesbian couples under threat by male acquaintances. The typical protagonist throughout is a writing professor of Scandinavian heritage. In "Just Another Family," Sibyl, back in Minnesota for her father's funeral, finds her childhood bedroom cluttered with Bibles and rifles. Anecdotes the family spins as humorous--such as her mother putting her in the oven when she wouldn't stop crying--reveal hidden trauma.
Characters are haunted by loss and grapple with moral dilemmas. In the title story, Phil's comfortable home life with Kelvin in San Francisco can't outweigh memories of a long-ago plane crash. In "The Bus Driver," Clare ponders telling the police that a popular high school basketball coach's death, presumed accidental, may have been revenge for sexual misconduct involving her best friend.
"Aaron Englund and the Great Great," a prequel to Ostlund's After the Parade, impresses with its third-person limited re-creation of a five-year-old's viewpoint. Each story has the complexity and emotional depth of a novel; endings are often chillingly inconclusive. Freedom versus safety for queer people is a resonant theme in this engrossing collection ideal for Alice Munro and Edward St. Aubyn fans. Happiness might be out of reach for these characters dealing with family trauma, but tracing the way from there to here offers closure. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck