Happy All the Time, Laurie Colwin
Happy All the Time, Laurie Colwin
List: $15.00 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.50

Happy All the Time

Author: Laurie Colwin

Narrator: Lisa Flanagan

Unabridged: 6 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/12/2022


Synopsis

A modern classic first published in 1978 that is as much a sophisticated romantic comedy about the love between two partners as it is a novel about the powerful bonds shared by family members, friends, colleagues and confidants.

"A funny, loving, celebratory book in which everything is perfect." —The Boston Globe

Guido and Vincent, best friends (and third cousins), aren’t expecting to fall head-over-heels in love, but that is exactly what happens. Guido is smitten with Holly, a dazzling young woman who chafes at the idea of complacency, while Vincent falls for Misty, a work colleague with an acerbic sense of humor who seems as uninterested in romance as she is in Vincent (at first). In the months that follow, both couples will experience the rituals of courtship, jealousy, estrangement, family entanglements, and other perils of the heart as they try to find love in spite of themselves.

Colwin is a master of portraying the messiness of life: here, in hilarious and endearing prose, she follows these two improbable pairs, and their families, as they navigate and ultimately find happiness together—not all the time, but for most of it. 

With a foreword by Katherine Heiny, author of Early Morning Riser.

About Laurie Colwin

Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels: Happy All the Time; Family Happiness; Goodbye Without Leaving; Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object; and A Big Storm Knocked It Over; three collections of short stories: Passion and Affect, Another Marvelous Thing, and The Lone Pilgrim; and two collections of essays: Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. She died in 1992.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on May 06, 2025

halle said this book is the 70s equivalent of sally rooney, and she was completely right. [URL not allowed] this is the kind of book that is so enjoyable for every second it makes you want to go back and lower the rating of everything you've read of late. it is so funny and so p......more

Goodreads review by Glenn on January 14, 2016

This is the fourth book I’ve read by the wonderful writer Laurie Colwin, who died tragically young – she was only 48 years old – in 1992. Her work, although a little dated, deserves to be discovered by a new generation. I see I’ve rated all of her books 4 stars. They’re uniformly modest and lovely, b......more

Goodreads review by Joe on July 10, 2007

My experience reading this novel was really strange. When I was a senior in high school, I read a short story called "An Old Fashioned Romance" by Colwin in my AP class. I remember being struck, and a little disappointed, by how bright and optimistic the story was - up to that point, I'd understood......more

Goodreads review by Sava (Fang Runin’s version) on March 01, 2025

3.75⭐️ Such a love-ly book. I really loved Guido and Holly, but as I read, I understood that I adored Vincent and Misty so much more. They were just the most well-written and developed. Misty is a mood, and the best character in this book.......more

Goodreads review by Victoria on August 15, 2024

Un libro en el que no pasa nada y que sin embargo habla de todo aquello que hace que la vida valga la pena. Al principio me fue difícil conectar con la historia, tiene momentos en los que desvaría de más, pero es un poco esa forma de mostrar la vida -desde su locura e incoherencia- la que le da su be......more


Quotes

“A jewel of romantic comedy. . . . A comedy of manners that reminds us that manners are comic and should be enjoyed as such. . . . This giddy courtship novel features Misty Berkowitz, Colwin’s most memorable creation — think Larry David, but with a secretly vulnerable, generous heart.” —The New York Times

"Shimmering, funny. It made everything in my life seem a whole lot better." —Cosmopolitan

"A pleasure ... endless surprises and ultimately boundless joy ... It would be difficult not to enjoy it all." —The New Yorker

"A funny, loving, celebratory book in which everything is perfect." —The Boston Globe

 “A wise, bighearted book by a wise, bighearted writer. A deft and funny one, too.” —The Washington Post

"Merry and bright and tender, written in exquisitely balanced sentences that taste just right. Comparison with Jane Austen is not out of order." —New York Post

“Laurie Colwin was the best kind of master: human and humorous, full of wisdom and love. When am I happy all the time? When I have a stack of Laurie Colwin books beside me.” —Emma Straub, bestselling author of All Adults Here

"How is it I hadn't heard of Happy All the Time until now?  What a breezy, witty, nutty book. It's charm distilled." —Maria Semple, bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette

"An elegant, fresh, funny tale of four people in love. There’s electricity here. . . . Pure delight." —The Village Voice

"Colwin’s canny Manhattan pastorale strikes me as at least as much fun to read as Sense and Sensibility." —Newsweek

“Laurie Colwin’s great subject was happiness—whether romantic, familial, domestic, or culinary—and she managed to write about it with both élan and emotional depth. . . . How wonderful it is that her books are still with us.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Luminous . . . a book that lingers sweetly and hilariously in the memory.” —The Dallas Morning News

"Seriously wise, seriously wonderful, seriously comic—your life will be richer for it." —Katherine Heiny