Often I Am Happy A Novel

For fans of The Dinner: a gem of a short novel about friendship, secrets, and two marriages. "Often I am happy and yet I want to cry; / For no heart fully shares my joy." - B.S. Ingemann As the novel opens, Ellinor is seventy. Her husband Georg has just passed away, and Ellinor is struck with the need to confide in someone, believing that language only has significance when shared. She addresses Anna, her long-dead best friend, who was also Georg's first wife. Fully aware of the absurdity of speaking to someone who cannot hear her, Ellinor nevertheless finds it meaningful to divulge long-held secrets and burdens of her past: her mother's heartbreaking pride; Ellinor's courtship with her first husband, Henning; their seemingly charmed friendship with another newlywed couple, Anna and Georg. Wry and mellow yet infused with subdued emotion, this philosophical, lyrical novel moves in parallel narrative threads, coming to the disastrous ski trip that shattered the two couples' lives together, while questioning the assumptions we cherish concerning identity and love.