"Love was a simple equation, a recipe that could produce a decent result with the right ingredients and timing. Spend enough time together... and anyone could fall in love." This pragmatic and unromantic observation is one of many memorable lines in Galt Niederhoffer's chillingly accurate portrayal of a marriage headed toward the rocks. Love and Happiness is so on the mark when it comes to the boredom that sometimes crops up after a decade of marriage, it's a little scary.
The story traces Jean's initial love for her husband (two passionate artists in lust and making short films), her current floundering marriage and her adorable yet needy children. Jean spends nights in her Brooklyn brownstone obsessed with social media, writing passionate e-mails to a college ex-boyfriend she never sends. She despises sex with her husband. This is a woman who, if she's not in crisis, is surely stalled. Jean falls hard for a man whose only attribute seems to be his mysterious newness. Then, of course, comes the affair.
In Jean, Niederhoffer (The Romantics) has created a protagonist who has stopped pretending. She treats her husband with patronizing contempt (he's just so needy!) and crazily hires a private detective to investigate someone she meets in a bar. She's a mirror for an impulsive streak most adults have squelched--and readers will be unable to resist becoming intrigued by her.
Resonating, realistic and utterly unforgettable, Love and Happiness brings an innovative perspective on one of the world's oldest institutions. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend