Name: HAPPINESS FALLS
Rating: 4.029411764705882 (17 reviews)
ISBN: 9780571371495

ANGIE. KIM

'i Loved this Book.' Gabrielle Zevin

HAPPINESS FALLS

Lindsay

I don't believe in optimism. I believe there's a fine line (if any_ between optimism and willful idiocy, so I try to avoid optimism altogether, lest I fall over the line mistakenly.

saying we couldn't have known something was wrong because it was such a typical morning, which is an asinine thing to say because why would you assume things can't go wrong simply because they haven't yet? Life isn't geometry; terrible, life-changing moments don't happen predictably, at the bottom of a linear slope. Tragedies and accidents are tragic and accidental precisely because of their unexpectedness.

There's a concept in heuristics called selective perception, a type of confirmation bias that describes the powerful human tendency to make assumptions and even perceive things differently based on how they align with our expectations.

Once you make that first assumption, another cognitive bias takes over: the anchoring bias, people's tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we get on any given topic.

It's always irked me that the gender mismatch in our looks has girls swooning over John's "pretty-boy" face, whereas people call me "handsome," which I've learned is not a compliment. Whenever men have features deemed "feminine," that makes them more attractive to women (thus, the sensitive male who isn't afraid to cry and the pretty-boy thing girls love), whereas women with "masculine" features (like my strong jaw and nose, and my no-nonsense get-stuff-done attitude) seem to repel men. Proof that women are less rigid about gender conformity and heteronormativity than men? Discuss.

Research shows your genetic optimism makeup accounts for 40% of your happiness.

It's a common mistake, saying verbal to refer to oral speech. It's a pet peeve of mine when people say "verbal, not written," because written is verbal. So why do we call nonspeakers "nonverbal," use the label "nonverbal autism"? It leads to the unwarranted assumption that those people are wholly without words. I've brought this up to people, and they dismiss it as "just semantics." But sometimes semantics matter. Words matter. They influence our thinking.

In music, the longer a dissonant chord is sustained, the greater the emotional satisfaction when it resolves.

At what point would the listener get frustrated and give up on the promise of resolution?

sina (she/her) 

I don't believe in optimism. I believe there's a fine line (if any) between optimism and willful idiocy, so l try to avoid optimism altogether, lest I fall over the line mistakenly. 

Remmi Ahmed

It's funny with siblings, how you think of them as just there, but then something great or awful happens that unearths and makes visible what Koreans call jeong. It's hard to explain in English; it's not any particular emno- tion-not affection or even love--but a complex bond defined by its depth and history: that sense of belonging to the same whole, your fates intertwined, impossible to sever no matter how much you may want to. 

A rare upside of the pandemic: the prohibition of uninvited, unwelcome bombardments of physical affection from parental acquaintances you barely know and can't quite place.

Angie Kim

When a father goes missing, his family’s desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another—both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek. “Brilliant, immersive, and deeply moving, Happiness Falls is more than just a fantastic story well told. It’s a book that will change the way you think—a book that will change your life.”—Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth, finalist for the National Book Award “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.

A Novel

Happiness Falls

erin

boring as hell, a thriller that isn’t at all thrilling, and definitely something far from a page-turner. i’ve also read other people’s reviews and it turns out that the author is promoting a debunked and harmful autism rhetoric, which just makes it all worse. i regret i wasted so much time on this book, especially that i didn’t even have it on my tbr and picked it up on a whim. ugh

i think the book draws important discussion and attention to (neuropsychological) diagnoses, as well as the variance in how they look on other people/how they affect an individual/the widespread affect on a family unit trying to live “normally” when “normal” has gone belly up. throw in a pandemic (which we very much lived through!) and it felt a little. bizarre, too on-the-nose to experience as i made my way through everything the parksons lived in this tale. an alien reality that we all experienced. 

the characters were three-dimensional at times - especially eugene, which was especially well-done since most of what we know of him is through mia’s anecdotes and expectations of him (and what, in the end, kind of is the very thing that obfuscates the truth from us). i enjoyed the twists, the other little needles and jabs that angie kim hinted at and would unveil later on — especially the angle nearer to the end, the way eugene would have moments of clarity, of understanding, contrary to what everyone else thought about him. i loved the eerieness as it all wrapped up, seeing mia entertain the possibility that dad parkson’s death wasn’t as accidental as it ended up being (which scenario is worse?). macabre stuff. 

karina

i think the book draws important discussion and attention to (neuropsychological) diagnoses, as well as the variance in how they look on other people/how they affect an individual/the widespread affect on a family unit trying to live “normally” when “normal” has gone belly up. throw in a pandemic (which we very much lived through!) and it felt a little. bizarre, too on-the-nose to experience as i made my way through everything the parksons lived in this tale. an alien reality that we all experienced. 

the characters were three-dimensional at times - especially eugene, which was especially well-done since most of what we know of him is through mia’s anecdotes and expectations of him (and what, in the end, kind of is the very thing that obfuscates the truth from us). i enjoyed the twists, the other little needles and jabs that angie kim hinted at and would unveil later on — especially the angle nearer to the end, the way eugene would have moments of clarity, of understanding, contrary to what everyone else thought about him. i loved the eerieness as it all wrapped up, seeing mia entertain the possibility that dad parkson’s death wasn’t as accidental as it ended up being (which scenario is worse?). macabre stuff. 

Eva Ströberg

Happiness Falls - Angie Kim
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⭐️⭐️
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I believe I would enjoy this book more if there were no footnotes and many references to psychology, linguistic citations and the many notes about happiness quotients. I don’t want a lecturing book (I would pick up a non fic for that) and this feels not entertaining enough despite the story
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It’s a family drama. Mia found out that her dad was missing and didn’t come home after taking her younger brother Eugene, who is suffering AS syndrome, from the park. Eugene came home, jumping, clearly agitated from what he had experience but since he couldn’t talk, there was no way to get the story about what happened to the dad.
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It was a promising start, that turned out dull and lecturing for most of the length of the book. Maybe it’s just me but I almost had to skim the book over to get to the end
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#bookstagram #angiekim #happinessfalls #americanauthor #2023readingchallenge #2023reads #currentlyreading

         I keep an actual book log.  It used to be handwritten, a few years ago I switched it to my computer because I can type exponentially faster than I can write things out by hand.  I’ve been doing it since about 2000 when I was doing my student teaching in a 4th grade classroom.  The mentor teacher required her students to keep a reading log, and shortly after school began that year, one particularly precocious young man asked the mentor teacher if she kept her own reading log.  Her response that she didn’t need to keep a reading log because she’s a grown up, while not at all surprising, irked quite a few of the students in that room.  They didn’t feel like it was fair that the teacher wasn’t willing to do the same thing she expected her students to do.  I decided to maintain my own reading log after that, and that point of view stuck with me throughout the course of my time as a classroom teacher.  After college, when I was teaching language arts or social studies, I gave my students writing prompts to do for the first 10-15 minutes each class.  I then offered a small amount of extra credit to any student who wanted to share.  I also completed those same writing prompts (not at the same time, those first 10-15 minutes were for classroom admin tasks) that I frequently shared as well.  My students always loved it when I shared.  While I apologize that I have strayed from the original point of this paragraph: that I keep a book log, I do like to reminisce about my teaching days. 

            Back to the book log.  I can look back on previous years’ book logs and find dozens upon of books I have given a five-star rating each year.  This year, 2023, I have only thirteen so far, and it’s already October.  I’m uncertain if I’m more discerning, or if I’m just not connecting with as many books, but I just haven’t read as many I believe deserve that fifth star from me.  This particular book came really damn close to NOT being a five-star.  It took me forever to read (it was a physical book that I owned versus a library ebook that had a due date, those usually take quite a bit longer), I found some of the language pretentious at times, and for so long, I was entire sure what direction this story was going to go in, which made it difficult to engage as a reader.  Then I finished and marinated on it; I described it to my husband (who didn’t really listen); I realized that I misjudged everything about this book.

            Regarding the pretentious language, this is a family that takes pride in their academic successes, thus, the language makes complete sense.  What I thought was pretentious was genuinely just the way they think and speak.  My apologies.  After a while, I appreciated the wittiness of the pretentious language, almost as though the author was poking fun at the family and their pretentiousness.  I found the footnotes to be a bit of a comic relief amidst all of the strife the family was experiencing.  While frantically searching or their father, they had the added joy of having to defend their developmentally disabled (I don’t even know if that’s the correct phrase anymore) brother from assault and potential murder charges.  This family went through the wringer. 

            What really stuck with me about this book was that it made me really think about the realities of “nonverbal” differently-abled people.  Are they really non-verbal?  We knew Stephen Hawking had a brilliant mind because he had once been able to speak and vocalize clearly, eventually losing his vocal ability.  However, he was still able to communicate.  Are those that are not able to speak vocally truly without words?  Or are they imprisoned by silence simply because a functional alternative had never been presented?  Those questions will haunt me for quite some time, and any book that is capable of making me think this heartily is decidedly worth that fifth star. 

Kristen Claiborn

         I keep an actual book log.  It used to be handwritten, a few years ago I switched it to my computer because I can type exponentially faster than I can write things out by hand.  I’ve been doing it since about 2000 when I was doing my student teaching in a 4th grade classroom.  The mentor teacher required her students to keep a reading log, and shortly after school began that year, one particularly precocious young man asked the mentor teacher if she kept her own reading log.  Her response that she didn’t need to keep a reading log because she’s a grown up, while not at all surprising, irked quite a few of the students in that room.  They didn’t feel like it was fair that the teacher wasn’t willing to do the same thing she expected her students to do.  I decided to maintain my own reading log after that, and that point of view stuck with me throughout the course of my time as a classroom teacher.  After college, when I was teaching language arts or social studies, I gave my students writing prompts to do for the first 10-15 minutes each class.  I then offered a small amount of extra credit to any student who wanted to share.  I also completed those same writing prompts (not at the same time, those first 10-15 minutes were for classroom admin tasks) that I frequently shared as well.  My students always loved it when I shared.  While I apologize that I have strayed from the original point of this paragraph: that I keep a book log, I do like to reminisce about my teaching days. 

            Back to the book log.  I can look back on previous years’ book logs and find dozens upon of books I have given a five-star rating each year.  This year, 2023, I have only thirteen so far, and it’s already October.  I’m uncertain if I’m more discerning, or if I’m just not connecting with as many books, but I just haven’t read as many I believe deserve that fifth star from me.  This particular book came really damn close to NOT being a five-star.  It took me forever to read (it was a physical book that I owned versus a library ebook that had a due date, those usually take quite a bit longer), I found some of the language pretentious at times, and for so long, I was entire sure what direction this story was going to go in, which made it difficult to engage as a reader.  Then I finished and marinated on it; I described it to my husband (who didn’t really listen); I realized that I misjudged everything about this book.

            Regarding the pretentious language, this is a family that takes pride in their academic successes, thus, the language makes complete sense.  What I thought was pretentious was genuinely just the way they think and speak.  My apologies.  After a while, I appreciated the wittiness of the pretentious language, almost as though the author was poking fun at the family and their pretentiousness.  I found the footnotes to be a bit of a comic relief amidst all of the strife the family was experiencing.  While frantically searching or their father, they had the added joy of having to defend their developmentally disabled (I don’t even know if that’s the correct phrase anymore) brother from assault and potential murder charges.  This family went through the wringer. 

            What really stuck with me about this book was that it made me really think about the realities of “nonverbal” differently-abled people.  Are they really non-verbal?  We knew Stephen Hawking had a brilliant mind because he had once been able to speak and vocalize clearly, eventually losing his vocal ability.  However, he was still able to communicate.  Are those that are not able to speak vocally truly without words?  Or are they imprisoned by silence simply because a functional alternative had never been presented?  Those questions will haunt me for quite some time, and any book that is capable of making me think this heartily is decidedly worth that fifth star. 

Lamia Hajani

Since finishing Miracle Creek, I've been waiting with bated breath for Angie Kim's next novel. Happiness Falls did not disappoint once I read it.

The story follows the fallout after the patriarch of a biracial family goes missing. The only witness to what happened is his son, Eugene, who has both ASD and Angelman Syndrome and cannot communicate by speaking. What follows is the riveting story of a family trying to find out what happened while also protecting Eugene.

Told from the perspective of Mia, the sister of Eugene, the book is enthralling and well-researched. Kim handles writing about disability exceptionally well and with great sensitivity. I was very impressed with how this book felt realistic, while still keeping me on my toes. Additionally, the use of footnotes is creative and well done.

I recommend Happiness Falls to anyone who likes the mystery/thriller genre. Kim is an excellent writer, and she deserves all the hype. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book!

Drea Macias

Trip Dunham 

Kelsey Mcdaniel

Anna

Ashley

Erin Goss

Kaelan Chambers

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.

HAPPINESS FALLS 'i Loved this Book.' Gabrielle Zevin

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