Are You Happy?: Stories
"Once I read the first story in Are You Happy?, I put aside everything else to savor the rest. This is a wise collection, capturing its characters swimming upstream to encounter their fates. With vivid and compassionate prose that explores the countless ways we betray and then rediscover ourselves, Lori Ostlund reminds us of the vitality of the genre."
Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Play for the End of the World and A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness

Nine exquisite stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence that looms daily over women and the LGBTQ+ community. 

An aspiring veterinarian survives a plane crash and starts life over in California. A woman mourns the loss of her childhood friend’s innocence and rethinks justice. A queer teacher's sense of safety in the classroom is destroyed. With settings ranging from small-town Minnesota to New Mexico, from bars and bedrooms to a furniture store and a community college, Are You Happy? casts a spotlight on people who try—and often fail—to make peace with their pasts while navigating their present relationships and notions of self. In prose that is evocative and restrained, unpredictable and masterful, Lori Ostlund offers a darkly humorous and compassionate examination of America’s preoccupation with loneliness, happiness, guns, and violence.
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Are You Happy?: Stories
"Once I read the first story in Are You Happy?, I put aside everything else to savor the rest. This is a wise collection, capturing its characters swimming upstream to encounter their fates. With vivid and compassionate prose that explores the countless ways we betray and then rediscover ourselves, Lori Ostlund reminds us of the vitality of the genre."
Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Play for the End of the World and A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness

Nine exquisite stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence that looms daily over women and the LGBTQ+ community. 

An aspiring veterinarian survives a plane crash and starts life over in California. A woman mourns the loss of her childhood friend’s innocence and rethinks justice. A queer teacher's sense of safety in the classroom is destroyed. With settings ranging from small-town Minnesota to New Mexico, from bars and bedrooms to a furniture store and a community college, Are You Happy? casts a spotlight on people who try—and often fail—to make peace with their pasts while navigating their present relationships and notions of self. In prose that is evocative and restrained, unpredictable and masterful, Lori Ostlund offers a darkly humorous and compassionate examination of America’s preoccupation with loneliness, happiness, guns, and violence.
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Are You Happy?: Stories

Are You Happy?: Stories

by Lori Ostlund
Are You Happy?: Stories

Are You Happy?: Stories

by Lori Ostlund

Hardcover

$26.00 
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    Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on May 6, 2025

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Overview

"Once I read the first story in Are You Happy?, I put aside everything else to savor the rest. This is a wise collection, capturing its characters swimming upstream to encounter their fates. With vivid and compassionate prose that explores the countless ways we betray and then rediscover ourselves, Lori Ostlund reminds us of the vitality of the genre."
Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Play for the End of the World and A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness

Nine exquisite stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence that looms daily over women and the LGBTQ+ community. 

An aspiring veterinarian survives a plane crash and starts life over in California. A woman mourns the loss of her childhood friend’s innocence and rethinks justice. A queer teacher's sense of safety in the classroom is destroyed. With settings ranging from small-town Minnesota to New Mexico, from bars and bedrooms to a furniture store and a community college, Are You Happy? casts a spotlight on people who try—and often fail—to make peace with their pasts while navigating their present relationships and notions of self. In prose that is evocative and restrained, unpredictable and masterful, Lori Ostlund offers a darkly humorous and compassionate examination of America’s preoccupation with loneliness, happiness, guns, and violence.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781662603020
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Publication date: 05/06/2025
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 43,011
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

About The Author
Lori Ostlund is the author of the story collection, The Bigness of the World, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and was a Lamda finalist. Her second book, a novel, After the Parade, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Ferro-Grumley Award, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories, and literary journals such as New England Review, The Kenyon Review, and ZYZZYVA. Lori is the series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
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