Are You Happy?, Lori Ostlund
Are You Happy?, Lori Ostlund
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Are You Happy?
Stories

Author: Lori Ostlund

Narrator: Rebecca Gallagher

Unabridged: 8 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/06/2025


Synopsis

"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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Thomas on June 22, 2025

3.5 stars One of the first short story collections that’s made me feel something in a while. At their strongest, the stories in this collection address meaningful themes pertaining to class, gender, and sexual orientation while centering characters you come to care for. I found myself actually invest......more

Goodreads review by Ashley on September 07, 2024

A strange (in a good way) short story collection to crack you up while covering a variety of heavier topics. I'm impressed by Lori Ostlund's ability to merge motherhood, sex & religion, family norms & dysfunction, education, memory, language, gun safety and more without feeling like it was all over......more

Goodreads review by Seawitch on June 14, 2025

This is a wonderfully written collection of stories by a new to me but award winning author. The stories seem autobiographical although the characters have different names. The fathers were mostly awful and abusive. Some of the mothers weren’t ideal either. The partners of the main character are mos......more

Goodreads review by Kasa on October 14, 2024

Lori Ostlund has been a favorite ever since After the Parade, my introduction to her style and themes, a novel although she is categorized as a short story author. Well, these stories more than bolster that description. There's not a clinker in the bunch, and to define one or more as weaker than oth......more

Goodreads review by Kate on May 14, 2025

Are You Happy is a collection of stories based mainly in Minnesota. Most of the stories have an underlying sense of threat - either physical or mental which makes them all somewhat edgy and disturbing. You are left under no illusion about the tone of the stories from the first in which we find sexual......more