Dimensions
142 x 223 x 26mm
The Toscanos are doing the weekly shop. Odile takes care of the groceries and sends Robert off to the cheese counter. He manages to come back with the wrong cheese only to find that Odile has filled the trolley with sweets and snacks for the kids. The fight that ensues is petty, cruel, hilarious and embarrassingly familiar, as the couple point-score, snatch, storm off and mock each other with childish fury. Robert wonders why they can't be more like their friends, the Hutners, who call each other dearesto and say things like let's treat ourselves to a nice meal out, darlingo. But then, the Hutners have their own issues. For years they have been pretending that their only son is on an internship abroad. In fact he's in a mental institution convinced of being C line Dion. Then there's Marguerite who remembers a spinster from her childhood and fears she is becoming her, as she petitions her dead father about a hopeless crush from years before; Vincent who witnesses his impossible mother flirting in an oncologist's waiting room; Chantal who shamelessly sleeps with other women's husbands. This is a brilliantly caustic, laugh-out-loud chronicle of marital passive aggression, shameful secrets, adultery, friendship, parenthood: the struggles of being a couple u and the pain of being alone. On a knife edge between anguish and laughter, Yasmina Reza's pitch-perfect prose creates moments of pure black comedy that take us to the heart of what it is to be human, cohabiting with other humans. Happy are the Happy sees the award-winning author of Art at the height of her powers.
