Book Review - Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados

When you open the front cover of the Happy Hour there’s a blurb that begins: “With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City.” This causes me to feel sooo torn. I’ve read everything Ottessa Moshfegh has ever published and I love it all. So I should like this book - but I can’t help goin into it thinking: will it really be as good as Moshfegh? (I haven’t read any Nancy Mitford yet but she’s on The List)

When I began reading I couldn’t help but constantly compare the characters to the protagonist of My Year of Rest and Relaxation or to those in the short story collection Homesick For Another World. At first, I didn’t find they were holding up but I am a sucker for all things coming of age and I will read (and find a way to enjoy) anything set in New York.

I’m what Granados might call a “Territorial New Yorker” and as such it took some effort for me to find a way to connect with the slice of life passages in the novel’s early chapters depicting the local deli, waiting for the subway and the liminal beauty of metal baskets at the corner laundromat. I really couldn’t shake that Moshfesh comparison - I was waiting for more dirt, mold and devastation.

My impression turned sharply for the better when it was revealed that the speaker of the novel, Isa Esley, keeps a diary. This is intensely relatable to me as I have a strict habit of daily journaling myself. It didn’t take long after that to realize that this book is the diary. The entire book takes place over the course of a summer and each chapter is titled with only a date. Any subconscious Moshfegh comparisons were washed away after this. The idea that this book is the published diary of the speaker was the hook I needed as reader to really delve in.

I can sum this book in one of Granados’s own lines of dialog (in which the speaking character is describing a book!): “It’s decadent and goes nowhere; you’ll like it.” I simply must believe this is a light-hearted self-deprecating joke. Not only did this book offer vignettes that anyone who’s spent time living in New York will find charming (deli, subway, etc) there are themes and mannerisms of the characters that will especially appeal to terminally online millennial cuspers and older zoomers. These include seemingly random yet tasteful capitalization of words and short phrases (Urban Life, everything is an Experience, Everyone is dating The Owner, etc.) ******for emphasis and a phrase from Isa’s inner monologue about not saving contacts in one’s phone as a way of keeping one’s distance. Moshfegh doesn’t have any published work taking place in the iPhone era!

I have a very vivid memory of a close friend visiting me in New York during my freshman year at NYU. We were eighteen and riding the subway together during rush hour. He said: “New York is such a grind.” Somehow that stuck with me. It is a grind, and there’s no choice. The social capital of New York is brevity and New Yorkers know how to look down and hustle. This book nails that. The characters judge others for how they perform their version of the New York Grind at some late night art party for Intellectuals and in the very next chapter they’re showing up late, hungover and unshowered to their vintage clothing stall in a thrift market trying to make ends meet. There’s a tone that our heroes really aren’t at all unlike the hazy, ephemeral subjects of their judgement from the bar on the previous page.

This book makes me want to jump the mf MTA turnstile! Isa and Gala keep refilling their MetroCards and I’m calling shenanigans. Broke New York youths don’t pay for the subway. Maybe this universe has an optimistic version of honesty and innocence in the city that never sleeps. This is emphasized in the scene where Isa and Gala excuse themselves from a dinner right as the check arrives to sneak out the backdoor and run away. Robinhood vibes y’no? Stealing is good, when it’s from rich, one-dimensional people.

I wanted to call shenanigans on the fact that Isla and Gala keep hailing cabs until I learned that the novel is set in summer 2013, Uber and Lyft hardly existed at that time.

I’m definitely calling shenanigans on the lack of mention of Memorial Day Weekend or July 4th. I get that Isa is not American but the makeshift fireworks displays put on by Brooklyn locals are something to behold. That’s just my opinion though!

I like the part where they almost go to the Statue of Liberty but they don’t.

I like the chapter dated August 6th and that day is Isa’s mother’s birthday because that’s also my birthday.

I like when Isa and Gala get in a fight and Isa trucks off to the Hamptons for the weekend. A book about brushing shoulders with pseudo-intellectual artists/models/writers/business types in a New York summer simply couldn’t not mention the Hamptons Culture.

I like the Truth or Consequences, New Mexico shout out at the very end of the book.

This book is charming and even if it’s just for fun I’d certainly recommend it. New York is endless and goes nowhere, Happy Hour is the same.

some selected favorite quotes:

“It’s the time when people come home and turn on a lamp, and no one thinks to draw their curtains just yet. Civil dusk, it’s called. It’s the only hour in any city where everything suddenly turns familiar.” (p. 47)

“He asked me about the diary. ‘Who writes diaries anymore? It almost seems outdated.’ With slight mischief I remarked, ‘Maybe I belong to a different time.’” (p. 51)

“But really, New York has the worst ecology for any kind of relationship. How is it possible to sustain anything where there’s always someone else on the horizon? It’s the cheapest scam.” (p. 62)

“He said ‘It’s decadent and it goes nowhere; you’ll like it.’ I haven’t been able to prove him right.” (p. 75)

“By not saving his number, I’d created a sense of distance. I already have plenty of names I don’t recognize in my phone, and I usually have to save them with an identifying noun…If there is a finite capacity in one’s mind for names, I have surely reached my limit.” (p. 78)

“It’s funny how in a place where everything is an Experience, people see such little value in just living.” (p. 89)

“That nervous feeling was coming back.” (p. 93)

“I rarely find time alone, besides the early mornings, when I write.” (p. 88)

“I do not like coming home because it is the only place I am unsure of myself. Outside I know the way to walk across a thoroughfare, feeling practiced in my stride. Being alone with myself is being alone with my memories.” (p. 227)

“Sure, as quickly as things come into our possession, they can be taken away. Was life really that different with or without those things?” (p. 236)

“The party was at Palazzo Chupi, a funny pink addition to a West Village building I had never noticed before—mostly because I rarely look up.” (p. 239)