It is a pretty elusive concept - this happiness lark. (The Pursuit of Happiness - Douglas Kennedy)

Member Name: KingHerrod

Product:	The Pursuit of Happiness - Douglas Kennedy
Date:	04/05/02 (4026 review reads)
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Apparently the American born but London residing author, Douglas Kennedy is a well known and a critically acclaimed author, well you could have fooled me. I had never heard of the chap. Well not until (almost a year again now) I accidentally forgot to send back one of those book club returns and so was lumbered with the novel The Pursuit of Happiness by the aforementioned Kennedy. It was a lucky lumbering as the book evoked memories of Sebastian Faulks' beautiful way of conveying a narrative and in particular the book On Green Dolphin Street. However, The Pursuit of Happiness surpassed On Green Dolphin Street, it absorbed me, I wanted to find out what happened to the characters, I identified with their frustrations and idealism. All I wanted to do was read this book, everything else in my life just got in the way of this desire.

The Pursuit of Happiness is set in post World War Two America, more specifically Manhattan, New England and Maine. The Smythe siblings, Eric and Sara are literary and artistic and are enjoying the post war revelry and the opportunities that the end of global conflict is bringing. Manhattan is alive with jobs, wealth, diversity of culture and the ability to have a good time. All seems wonderful until Sara has a brief encounter with Jack Malone a dishy Irish American, U.S. Army journalist of conflicting ideological standpoints to Eric, the left leaning bohemian script writer and the apolitical Sara. That lightening bolt of connection hits Jack and Sarah and the rest of their lives becomes forever changed.

The plot line closely follows the Smythe siblings and their lives in Manhattan, but two shadows loom large over their existence, for Eric it is his pre-war membership of the communist party and for Sara it is Jack Malone and true love. These two factors serve to shape the sibling's destinies and are more inter-connected than the reader would first think. Sara is the driving character of the book and it is
from Sara's perspective that we see events.

Kennedy examines the fact that every family has its secrets, children do not know all that they think they know of their parents. More importantly, The Pursuit of Happiness makes the point that an event or events that happens to one or two people, is never an event or events that happens in isolation to its directly involved participants. The impact reverberates around all that are connected to those people and can sometimes be felt for generations afterwards.

The observant amongst you may have realised that the author is male and the perspective of the book is female. This quite often results in a book that misses the mark; the female character seems one of an alien sex, not female, not male, almost asexual. But in this instance the combination works, Sara is a strong independent female voice. The Pursuit of Happiness charts a time when women realised that they did not need a man in the traditional sense to be a whole being; although the world was only just starting to lose its prejudice against the working career orientated spinster.

"The sense of freedom was extraordinary. I was no longer under parental supervision. I was paying my own way in life. I answered to nobody."

""How getting married by the time you're twenty-three is a good thing, because you're suddenly relieved of the burden of making a living, or dealing with personal choice, or even spending time by yourself. Whereas, I'm rather scared of the idea of entrusting my entire future to another person. Because, hell aren't they as fallible as I am? And just as scared?""

However, a seriously bigoted prejudice of 1950s America is well highlighted, that of the communist witch hunt. This was a time in American history where paranoia ruled. A simple connection to a dog whose owner had at one time known a writer that had joined the communist party in 1929 and
then left in 1930 was enough to mean that the FBI were on your back - and if you did not squeal on a few more people of a slightly left wing persuasion your life was ruined. (OK, I exaggerate, but this period was almost as bad.) The Pursuit of Happiness pushes through the point that maybe a few genuine individuals - that may have slightly threatened the internal security of the country were apprehended; but that in the main the witch hunt just meant misery for a lot of Americans and unwarranted misery at that.

The Pursuit of Happiness is about real people, people that the reader can identify with. Each character has flaws, each has virtues, but not one stands up as the hero or the villain. The story is fiction, but it seems that it could quite easily be the tale of anybody's grand-mother of a slightly adventurous and social trend bucking nature.

Kennedy writes with a superb eye for detail, both in character and location, it is flowing and beautiful in style. Moreover, Kennedy cleverly links the recent past with our twenty first century existence. This is not a fast paced book - it lingers over issues and the question of why people do things, rather than just assuming that they do them. It captures an interesting period in American history, the paranoia of the right against the left - in a political sense, the start of commercialism and the awakening of suppressed intelligent women. Not only does this book deal with these issues, but it looks at why people are as they are, their background, their religion, the social code that they grew up in and their burning desires.

If you are a fan of a book with a fast moving plot line and little character exploration, then The Pursuit of Happiness is probably not for you. However, if you like books that explore emotion and the complexity of individual human interaction with societal rules - that make sure that you really know who you are reading about, then this is a book that I can tho
roughly recommend. Every time I picked this book up, I felt that I was transported to a cosy world - where I knew the people intimately and in this "give me everything quick" age, this type of book has become a rarity.

You can purchase The Pursuit of Happiness in hardback from amazon.co.uk for £7.99, however, I would recommend waiting a few weeks as it is surely due out in paperback in the very near future. This is a long book at 519 pages, but its length gives it its superb depth.

Published by Hutchinson. ISBN 0091794374.

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