Happiness

This got under my skin - in a good way.

Attila Asare is a Ghanaian psychiatrist visiting London to deliver a keynote presentation. He's had a career travelling from war zones to battlefields and is a noted expert in post-traumatic recovery. He's a recent widower, is also tending to a former lover who's tumbled into early dementia, and finds himself helping his niece navigate immigration issues and find her son Tano who's disappeared into the city. It's a lot, but Attila is all efficient composure, still out to attend the theatre, dine on his own or dance in his hotel room.

We're also introduced to Jean Turane in London, divorced and missing her son back in the US, designing small space gardens, and studying foxes. The two collide in a meet-cute on Waterloo bridge and Jean is soon enlisted in the search for Tano, bringing in her network of fox watchers comprised of traffic wardens, street sweepers, street performers, security guards and hotel doormen to find the lost boy.

And there's quite a bit about the foxes, coyotes and even urbanized parakeets here. How they've adapted to their ever changing situation. How they manage to thrive and how they still represent something other, something wild that needs to be tamed or eradicated before it can insinuate itself into our insulated world. We've got notes on assimilation, immigration and trauma as well as lessons in resilience and joy. How very highbrow - but at its core suffused with warmth and hope. An utterly lovely read that surprised me in the best of ways.

There are foxes in our backyard. I have only seen one once, but have seen their tracks in the snow or the frost, and occasionally in the wet spring mud. Prior to reading Ms. Forna's novel, I had never thought about the interior lives of these foxes and how they experience the world, but now I can't stop thinking about them. Happiness is ostensibly a novel about connections between people and the impacts of trauma, but really, it is a novel about being in touch with the living world around us, and how so much delight can be found when we commune with the urban natural environment.