The uneasy relationship between humankind and the animal world is just one of the many issues explored in Happiness.
Coyotes, wolves, urban foxes, paraqueets are all under threat in Aminatta’s novel. They represent a menace in the eyes of humans; a threat that must be eradicated by all possible means — legally or illegally. Farmers view the creatures as threats to their livestock and in the cities, popular opinion maintains that urban foxes spread disease. So foxes are culled, coyotes and wolves hunted and the tree habitats of nesting parakeets cut down and their eggs destroyed.
But yet they survive. There’s a lovely passage towards the end of the novel when Jean — one of the two protagonists — spies a small colony of parakeets in a dead tree she can see from her garden. Survivors of a cull in a nearby cemetery.
.. a parakeet glides from one branch to another where a second parakeet perches. They rest there for a moment, then take off in unison, joined by six or seven others, to fly across the city, who knows to which parks, gardens and squares. The only thing she knows is this: come dusk they will return.
it’s a message of hope in Happiness; a novel that has an underlying theme about survivors and outsiders.
Jean is a wildlife expert from Massachusetts who has set up home in London while she conducts study into urban foxes. Her funding from the European Commission is meagre so she’s forced to find another income stream by designing rooftop gardens.
One evening while she’s tracking a fox she collides with the bulky figure of Attila Asare, a Ghanian psychiatrist. He’s in London to speak at a conference about his experience in working with traumatised victims of war. The first encounter is brief but their paths continue to cross afterwards; their lives, slowly becoming more and more entwined.
Happiness has a complex plot involving Attila’s niece who has been arrested as a suspected illegal immigrant, and her son who has gone missing. There is also a thread about Attila’s former colleague and lover who is in a care home and showing signs of dementia. And of course there’s the question of whether his relationship with Jean will blossom into romance.
It’s a lot to fit into one novel, rather too much I felt. So some issues — such as the generalised assumptions about the psychological effect of trauma — don’t get the attention they deserve.
To add to the complexity there are multiple flashbacks which flesh out the details of events in Attilla and Jean’s lives. Some cover Attila’s experiences in Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Iraq and the sudden death of his wife. Others relate the disintegration of Jean’s marriage and her frustrations when her attempts to protect wild animals see her ridiculed and labelled “mad”.
The flow of the narrative is further interrupted by chapters which detail attempts throughout history to eradicate coyotes and wolves. If you’re particularly interested in the habits of various members of the canidae family, then you’ll love those interludes. but I found my attention wavering each time.
Of far more interest was Forna’s depiction of the underbelly of life in London. Street sweepers, security guards, kitchen staff and hotel doormen are all recruited by Jean to help her track and record sitings of urban foxes. They prove invaluable in finding and comforting the missing boy.
it made a refreshing change to read about the people who oil the machinery of the city. Their efforts at keeping buildings safe, the streets clean and litter bins emptied are seldom recognised nor openly appreciated. In fiction they’re often given short shrift but in Forna’s novel. these “outsiders” who fled war in their own countries, are brought wonderfully to life. They’re shown as people who have retained a sense of perspective even when confronted by finicky hotel and restaurant guests.
There are those who will not eat vegetables and those who will not eat meat, and those who only eat uncooked food … Others will eat no solid food and want special juices … we can make any kind our customers want, with kale and carrot and wheatgerm, celery, special ingredients say spirulina, seaweed for them that is ‘detoxing’ Whatever, whatever.
I’d have enjoyed the novel more if we could have spent even more time with these individuals, witnessing their quiet dignity and their capacity for small acts of human kindness. As it was, I finished the novel believing that Aminatta Forna is a writer who can vividly portray characters and a whole city but gets too swept along by the potential of all the ideas buzzing around in her head.
We're all friends here. Come and join the conversation