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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. Longlisted 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.… (more)
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With that fairly electric first line, we're off. Turns out that the dad, Adam, has gone missing. He'd gone to the park as usual with Eugene, the 14-year-old brother who has both autism and Angelman syndrome and cannot talk. So what happened? That is the crux of the matter.
Now this is a slightly unusual family. Mom Hannah, Korean-born, is a linguist. Dad Adam, American-born, is a corporate higher-up who has been delving deeply into psycho-social studies and 'happiness research' for lack of a better term. And the story takes these two major themes and weaves them in with the conditions Eugene lives with, how it affects the family, and what it has to do with the disappearance. Adam's notes are discovered early on: seems he's been....conducting experiements on the family? (To analyze the effect of various factors on happiness, but still.) Then Mia herself is verbose and sticks footnotes copiously through her narration. One doesn't have to read these, but I did and they didn't bother me as it might do for some readers. And that heavy foreshadowing! Couldn't you have left out all those ominous warnings, girl?
However. As well-executed as all this was, I began to get the uncomfortable feeling that what I was reading was not entirely fiction. Being alienated for not speaking Korean while living for a few years there as children; the automatic association of lower intelligence with certain accents; even the episodes of Eugene's therapists and his various meltdowns; casual racism towards black people in the U.S.: all this felt too on the nose, as though I were reading a real account of a family's toughest times. I began to wonder if there were just one too many threads here. That I couldn't work out which one could have been dispensed with is a testament to the author's skill, I suppose.
Then I read that author's note at the end. And sure enough some of my doubts were validated. I am still glad I read this, just that the subject matter almost felt theoretical in some sense, a bit of a slog. Nevertheless, Happiness Falls is a worthy work. I had to wait a long time for the library to loan me a copy and I'm glad I waited.
Angie Kim’s new novel Happiness Falls is a mystery and a family drama concerning the disappearance of the father, a son who cannot communicate the only witness. For Eugene’s mosaic Angelman syndrome means he is unable to talk, and he has motor difficulties, the fixed smile on his face giving no clue to his feelings.
Father Adam and mother Hannah came to odds over the false hope of Eugene learning to communicate, leading to Adam becoming a stay-at-home dad and Hannah returning to her career.
Twins Mia and John are nothing alike. They take after different parents, so a teacher thought Mia was Asian and John was Caucasian. John is an optimist, easier to like. Mia is a sceptic, logical, snarky.
Every day, Adam took Eugene for a walk in a park. One day, Eugene ran back home alone, distraught, blood on his clothes. Adam was nowhere to be found.
Secrets come out that bring doubt about Adam’s activities. Mia is especially interested in her father’s notebook discussing what he called the Happiness Quotient, a scientific exploration of how people’s optimism or pessimism affects their happiness level under differing situations.
When the police arrest Eugene, the family has to work fast to try to understand what happened on the walk near the Falls. What they learn is shocking and life-changing for them all.
What sets this book apart is Mia’s delving into the Happiness Quotient and exploring philosophical questions, and its addressing issues of communication. The family experience includes Hannah adjusting as a non-English speaking immigrant, and the family spending time in Korea where Mia felt categorized as an idiot for not speaking Korean. Eugene is presumed to be child-like in his mental development because he can’t communicate.
In the Author’s Note, Kim warns that we should not judge people based on their external appearance, nor should we judge people’s intelligence by their verbal skills, something she experienced as a young immigrant to America.
Yes, the passages from Adam’s notebook slow the book down, but this is not a page-turner, plot-driven beach read. Narrated by Mia, we see the story unravel through a complicated series of revelations that engage us, while he grappling with larger issues informs and elevates us.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
Mia tells the story that begins with her missing father. During her family's search for him, they learn many partial truths.
Even more so, this book is about Eugene, Mia's younger brother. He is autistic and also has Angelman syndrome, which is so misunderstood both in this story and in real life. They did not know Eugene as well as they thought.
HAPPINESS FALLS deals not only with a missing father but, also, a suspect brother who cannot communicate. In so doing it amazes as it takes on many issues and surprising twists.
And in the end, is there really a determination?
This review is of an advanced copy of HAPPINESS FALLS.
Author: Angie Kim
Publisher: Random House, Hogarth
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:
"Happiness Falls" by Angie Kim
My Sentiments:
"Happiness Fall" is quite a story about Asian Culture that features 'happiness, autism, communication, trust, and linguistics' in a mystery
Thank you to Net Gallery for the read and my giving my honest opinion of the novel.
The book read like a textbook for a philosophy class. The book is full of footnotes. Now, I appreciate that the author tried to do something different in a novel, being footnotes, but they were more annoying than useful. Too often in the book the author sidetracked from the story to discuss Happiness Quotient. The story often went off in tangents with the characters totally ignoring their primary quest, to learn what happened to their missing father.
I found none of the characters either likeable or relatable. I realize the protagonist does not always have to be likeable, but I cared for none of the characters. I cared not whether they succeeded or failed in their quest. The author at least needs to make me care about the characters. It appeared the author was trying to get a message through to the reader and simply “used” the characters to deliver that message. The characters were not well developed either, which is probably why I failed to care for them.
The dialogue was bland and unoriginal. All of the character sounded alike. We have two young adults that moved to the US from Korea at five years old, and a woman who moved here as an adult. All of them sounded the same as did all the other native English speakers. There needed to be some variety in the speech patterns. A twenty year old does not speak the same as a forty year old.
The story is one of a missing dad/husband, Adam. The last person to see Adam alive was his autistic, non-speaking son, who cannot tell what happened. The story is how the family and therapists were able to get him to communicate what happened to Adam. But at times, the story diverges and the family totally forgets about poor, old dad, and is more concerned with what makes one happy and if happiness is better or worse based upon preconceived expectations. Throughout the book I wanted to remind them to get back on track looking for Adam.
The book was rather long, just short of 400 pages. A hundred pages or more could have been cut and made the book a better and tighter story. Cut all the happiness quotient talk and footnotes. At times I really did not want to pick up the book and resume reading. I really would not recommend you waste your time or money on this book.
Happiness Falls is a remarkably intelligent book that can be skimmed over in parts if the reader is not interested in the deeper subject matter. Much of this substance is located in the footnotes. I found each theme captivating. Angie Kim has truly outdone herself. This is an outstanding novel that should not be missed.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC of the book.
Briefly, the mystery is set in Covid times (but it is not about Covid) with a hyper-intelligent and engaged
The book touches on many issues of racism and ableism since they impact everyone's choices here and Kim does this with a blessedly deft touch. This book is not about racism and ableism, but it also is not exactly not about those things since everyone's psyches are touched by those forces and they impact many assumptions, actions and inactions. One cool thing Kim does is put the explication of racist and ableist beliefs and actions in footnotes with a thorough but brief explanation. This works surprisingly well and tells us so much about everyone's choices without getting in the way of the central story. This is masterful. I did not read Kim's first book but it has been on my TBR. I need to get to that soon. I am very impressed.
I’was down with the flu so I needed what I thought would be an
The book covers the teaching of non-verbal people how to communicate by pushing, without guidance, a pen through one of the printed characters on a board in order to spell out sentences.
It is not till the end of the novel in the author’s end-notes that she explains that this method is fictional. But while you are reading, the footnotes make it appear that the method is real.This is relevant as the communication with one of the main characters is of prime importance in solving what might be a missing person or a murdered one. The need to validate the teaching method needs to be validated if the suspect is to be redeemed.
Another thread is about the possibility of assigning a quotient to happiness. Are lottery winners happier after a year, than people who became paraplegic a year after the accident that caused their plight? Great detail is gone into the statistics of various comparisons - to the level of different degrees of difference. If you tell your kids you are taking them to a good restaurant and then take them to a bad one, will they be happier when you eventually take them to a good one, than if you didn’t? The are footnotes after footnotes of such examples.
The immigrant experience of learning a new language and racial stereotyping also threads their way though Happiness Falls. As is computer literacy and the use of devices and modes of computer communication. The misinterpretation of how emails are read and SMS chats play a role. The computer engineer in me spotted some mistakes which sort of threw me off as I started watching out for more.
There’s a black man who is falsely accused by police, a lesbian couple, sexual stereotyping, the downside of the adversarial method of judgement, the voice of the voiceless … the list goes on.
Oh, and all takes place during Covid-19 lockdown.
Add in the missing person mystery, and there you have it.
A lengthy but an easy read of a well-researched novel.
I used the Happing Quotient ranking method to give it a three, with a low-ish standard deviation.
Unfortunately, this one didn’t pull me in.
The Rest of It:
It started off very strong. A close-knit family with a special needs son. A brother, a sister and mom and dad. All, trying hard to find some way to communicate with fourteen year old Eugene after he returns home in a
What happened? Calls are immediately made but go unanswered. What about their possessions? Eugene is completely unable to provide an explanation.
The family immediately contacts the police. Was there an accident? After some preliminary search some items are found but in water and damaged. How did it get to the bottom of a stream? What about the notebook they found with the words Happiness Quotient? What was dad working on?
The author does a good job of presenting enough information to keep it interesting. But the communication research that takes place in preparation to communicate with Eugene pulled me out of the story.
There are cause and effect charts, and just a lot of small findings that lead up to the surprising conclusion. I felt that the story lost its way mid-point. The family’s frustration and their inability to really get along make it a tense reading experience.
What starts out as a missing persons investigation shifts focus when it becomes clear to Mia, her mother, Hannah, and her twin brother, John, that Eugene is the prime suspect in her father's disappearance. He has both autism and Angelman's, and is unable to communicate what happened on the hike. As the family tries to piece events together while protecting Eugene from an overzealous police officer, they come to learn their own biases and misunderstandings about each other. Narrator Mia, a twenty-year-old college student home during the COVID shutdown, reflects on events in her hyperverbal way, including footnotes for some of her tangents. Ultimately, she asks how well we can know another person and what it means when we humans tend to equate verbal acuity with intelligence.
This is narrated by Mia, a college student, whose father goes missing while in an area of parkland with her brother Eugene. Eugene is autistic and has Angelman Syndrome, meaning that he does not speak and cannot tell anyone what
I found the ending rather unbelievable, although I am sure the author has done her homework and my scepticism is of the variety the book seeks to address. I also found the ending underwhelming and unsatisfactory. Covid seemed to be used as a bit of a plot device - popping up where it was useful.
I preferred this author's first novel.
Told by a college-aged narrator, with such a perfect "voice" that I was quite stunned to find that the author is in her mid-50s! The book is part mystery/whodunnit and part exploration of non-verbal disability - not your average combination!
While I could find minor quibbles with the
I know have to go back and read her first book - Mystery Creek.