Amy Scribner

NonfictionMemoir

Reassembling pieces of a missing life

Review by Amy Scribner

When David MacLean woke up on a train platform in India, he had no idea who he was or why he was there. “It was darkness, darkness, darkness, then snap. Me. Now awake,” he writes.

MacLean was hospitalized with severe hallucinations and near total amnesia. Officials assumed he was a foreigner who had taken too many drugs. The truth was that he was suffering from a reaction to an anti-malarial drug called Lariam, commonly used by soldiers and travelers and approved by the Federal Drug Administration after a questionable trial.

A writer, MacLean had traveled to India as a Fulbright Scholar to study local speech patterns for his novel. His parents came from Ohio after he was hospitalized. While he didn’t remember them, he started recognizing things about them: The way his father cried, the way his mother soothed him by pushing her thumb between his eyebrows: “I still didn’t have my memory, but I now had an outline of myself, like a tin form waiting for batter.”

The drug settled into MacLean’s brain and continued altering his chemistry for 10 years. He drank too much, smoked too much and considered suicide more than once.

“Life felt like a too-long race, all spent running in wet concrete, each year a little deeper in: toes, knees, pelvis, chest, neck, death,” he writes.

The Answer to the Riddle Is Me is a spare and unflinching memoir that takes the reader along on MacLean’s messy, one-step-forward, two-steps-back recovery. Based on an essay MacLean wrote for NPR’s “This American Life,” it is haunting on two fronts: His brutally honest recounting of his journey to the brink of suicide and back, and the questions he raises about the use of Lariam in the U.S. military despite its record of serious side effects. (Lariam is no longer the main anti-malarial drug, but it is still being given to some soldiers in Afghanistan. An Army epidemiologist called it the “Agent Orange of our generation” during testimony before a Senate subcommittee in 2012.)

Maclean may never be the same as he was before waking up on that train platform, but 10 years out, he is married and is an award-winning author. He still has days when, he writes, “[I]t seems irresponsible that I’m allowed to cross the street by myself. But this, in comparison to what I’ve been through, is everyday crazy, and everyday crazy is something I can handle.”

When David MacLean woke up on a train platform in India, he had no idea who he was or why he was there. “It was darkness, darkness, darkness, then snap. Me. Now awake,” he writes.

MacLean was hospitalized with severe hallucinations and near total amnesia.…

Fiction

Bridget Jones, funny as ever

Review by Amy Scribner

Bridget Jones aficionados will be thrilled that, after 14 years, there is a new installment about the adventures of this irrepressible British woman with a zest for life and wine.

They may be less enthused to find out that Bridget is no longer with her love Mark Darcy (played to perfection—and with a wink to Pride and Prejudice—by Colin Firth in the movie). I won’t ruin things by explaining exactly why Bridget is single again. Suffice it to say, she is heartbroken, and must hold things together for her two young children.

In Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Bridget is starting over again in a dating world that has moved mostly online. Like the previous Bridget books, this one is written as Bridget’s scribbled journal entries, but she now also Tweets (often drunkenly) and texts (also drunkenly). “The fantastic thing about texting is that it allows you to have an instant, intimate emotional relationship without taking up any time whatsoever or involving meetings or arrangements or any of the complicated things which take place in the boring old non-cyber world,” Bridget muses without a trace of irony.

Some things never change: Bridget’s raucous old pals Tom and Jude are still around, as funny and loyal as ever, and Daniel Cleaver, Bridget’s old fling and godfather to her children, makes a few appearances to toss some of his trademark double entendres her way. But Helen Fielding, to her credit, has evolved Bridget from a navel-gazing 30-something whose biggest worry was caloric intake to a (fairly) responsible mother who is lonely and overwhelmed. It’s not surprising that Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is deeply funny and compulsively readable. What is unexpected is how poignant it is in its exploration of love, loss and the courage to try again.

Bridget Jones aficionados will be thrilled that, after 14 years, there is a new installment about the adventures of this irrepressible British woman with a zest for life and wine.

They may be less enthused to find out that Bridget is no longer with her love…

NonfictionHistory

Where past and present meet

Review by Amy Scribner

Unfair as it may be, when most Americans think of Amsterdam, we think of drugs and the red light district. Yet in Amsterdam, Russell Shorto’s deeply fascinating history of what he calls “the world’s most liberal city,” we learn that this place steeped in history, art and philosophy is so much more.

Amsterdam began as a soggy little fishing village where herring was about the best thing going. Then, in 1345, a dying man threw up a Eucharist. The host was still whole, and would not burn. Clearly this was a divine act—Catholics believe the Eucharist is the body of Christ. Thousands made pilgrimages to Amsterdam, the first time most people on the continent paid attention to it. The street through which the pilgrims streamed into town was called the Holy Way and today is called Overtoom, which Shorto describes as “a gritty, Broadway-like stretch of drab shops and rental car outlets . . . chockablock with an unholy assembly of jewelry stores and designer shoe shops.”

Therein lies the best thing about this truly nifty book: Shorto zooms back and forth from medieval times to modern life, boggling the reader’s mind with how much things change and yet stay the same.

The café where Shorto wrote much of the book? Used to be the house where Rembrandt lived with his wife before she died and he took up with the maid. That bridge he’s standing on? The site of the world’s first true stock market, where residents gathered to buy shares in the United East India Company (which, by the way, was the world’s first multinational corporation). By retelling the stories of the city’s residents—some famous, some forgotten—Shorto shows how the Dutch came to value personal liberty while sharing a sense of responsibility: That man-made system keeping the city from being flooded with seawater wasn’t going to pump itself.

“That is the story that Amsterdam tells,” writes Shorto. “Working together, we win land from the sea. Individually, we own it; individually, we prosper, so that collectively we do. Together, we maintain a society of individuals. For an American, raised on a diet of raw individualism, it remains a bit of a challenge to parse that logic.” Shorto does so, beautifully, in this examination of what society can—and perhaps should—be.

Unfair as it may be, when most Americans think of Amsterdam, we think of drugs and the red light district. Yet in Amsterdam, Russell Shorto’s deeply fascinating history of what he calls “the world’s most liberal city,” we learn that this place steeped in history,…

Fiction

A little help for an overwhelmed matriarch

Review by Amy Scribner

No one does slice-of-life like Terry McMillan, whose latest novel sets us down in a shabby modern-day Los Angeles neighborhood where Betty Jean Butler struggles to make ends meet and keep her family together.

Her daughter, Trinetta, is caught in the clutches of drug addiction. Her son, Dexter, is in prison for a foolish carjacking. And her other son, Quentin, is a successful chiropractor who wants nothing to do with his family. Add to all this a husband succumbing to senility, two busybody sisters and a fulltime job at a local hotel, and Betty Jean’s hands aren’t just full—they’re overflowing. Luckily, Betty Jean has a wisecracking best friend across the street to lean on, and a sassy nurse to help care for her husband—even if that care is delivered in a way found in no medical textbook.

When Trinetta leaves her two young sons with Betty Jean before disappearing into the streets, Betty Jean knows something’s got to give.

“Even though I haven’t told anybody, I’m scared,” she says. “What if I can’t handle all this responsibility? What if I’ve forgotten how to be a parent? . . . I don’t want them to turn out like mine did. I want them to be proud, honest, dignified, civil, kind and loving. I want them to be strangers to trouble.”

Betty Jean has to swallow her pride and ask for help in ways she never imagined. Slowly, in their own ways, friends and family band together to help her raise the boys, who have promising futures despite their troubled past.

McMillan will likely always be best known for her runaway bestsellers How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale, both made into movies. But Who Asked You? stands up to any of McMillan’s previous work, with a cast of wholly memorable characters and a plucky heroine you genuinely want to win. Although McMillan writes primarily about African-American families, her ever-present wry humor and keen portrayal of love in all its exasperating imperfection make her work universal.

No one does slice-of-life like Terry McMillan, whose latest novel sets us down in a shabby modern-day Los Angeles neighborhood where Betty Jean Butler struggles to make ends meet and keep her family together.

Her daughter, Trinetta, is caught in the clutches of drug addiction. Her…

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionFantasy

Through a portal to a dangerous world

Review by Amy Scribner

The bouncy title of this epic first novel sets up expectations of a certain type of book—maybe one with a pink stiletto or a sparkly diamond ring on the cover. Think again. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic is a medieval fairy tale with a deliciously dark twist: The heroine is a modern-day woman trapped in an alternate, magical world.

Nora Fischer’s dissertation is going nowhere fast—and her love life is in even worse shape—when she stumbles onto a portal to Semr, an archaic kingdom where magic is in the air and ideas about women’s roles are very different. Nora is enchanted (literally) by a woman named Ilissa, who quickly marries Nora off to her son to produce an heir. But her new family is not what it seems, and Nora flees to the protection of Aruendiel, a reclusive magician whose rough exterior hides a mysterious and painful past. Soon Nora has become Aruendiel’s apprentice, learning basic spells that come in handy when she and Ilissa meet again. Eventually, Nora will have to decide whether to make her way back home, or stay in a world she’s amazed to realize she has come to love.

Emily Croy Barker is the executive editor of The American Lawyer magazine, where she oversees coverage of things like antitrust mass actions in Europe and the population of minority lawyers at big law firms. One can only imagine the fun she had writing this soapy, snappy tale. I’d be a sucker for any book in which Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice played a prominent role (Nora translates that classic novel chapter by chapter for Aruendiel), but The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic stands on its own merits as a thoroughly enchanting read. While Nora and Aruendiel may be more Heathcliff and Catherine than Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, Barker has spun a clever, lush yarn that is uniquely its own.

The bouncy title of this epic first novel sets up expectations of a certain type of book—maybe one with a pink stiletto or a sparkly diamond ring on the cover. Think again. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic is a medieval fairy tale with…

NonfictionBiography

Don’t mess with Mother Kennedy

Review by Amy Scribner

Just when you think not another word could be written about the family with which Americans have a seemingly insatiable fascination, biographer Barbara A. Perry makes use of newly released papers to paint a fuller picture of Rose Kennedy than ever before in Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch.

Through letters and diaries, Perry depicts Rose Kennedy as a complicated, influential and—it must be said—not particularly likable woman. The mother of nine, including a future president, took her role seriously. She kept meticulous records of her children’s physical health on index cards, with a particularly obsessive focus on their teeth and weight. She instilled in them her strong Catholic faith and helped ensure they were well versed in everything from current events to geography. “My great ambition was to have my children morally, physically and mentally as perfect as possible,” Kennedy said.

Yet she also carefully cultivated and protected her family’s media image to help ensure political success and a TV-friendly appearance. She kept daughter Rosemary out of the limelight for decades to hide her mental retardation from the world. Kennedy also turned a blind eye to her husband’s many affairs and advised her daughters to do the same in their own marriages.

She thrived in the company of the world’s rich and powerful, especially when her husband Joe served as the United States ambassador to Great Britain in the years leading up to World War II. And while it’s hard to fault her for wanting some respite from such a large brood, it’s surprising to learn that she spent months traveling abroad, leaving her young children in the care of governesses, maids and nurses while she explored the globe and bought the latest Parisian fashions. In 1923, she took a six-week trip to California; she often escaped to Palm Beach during the cold Boston winters. “When I left my children and their problems at home, I wanted to tuck them aside mentally for a while and talk and hear about something new and different in order to refresh my mind,” she said.

A senior fellow in presidential oral history at the University of Virginia, Perry writes with compassion and brings keen insight into what Rose Kennedy’s own words tell us about this complex woman.

Just when you think not another word could be written about the family with which Americans have a seemingly insatiable fascination, biographer Barbara A. Perry makes use of newly released papers to paint a fuller picture of Rose Kennedy than ever before in Rose Kennedy:…

NonfictionBiography

Between the lines of Anne Frank’s diary

Review by Amy Scribner

Like millions of American children, I read and reread Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, mesmerized by the journal of her two years spent in hiding from the Nazis. Yet the book always remained somewhat cryptic for my young mind: What exactly was an “annex”? Why did Anne and her sister Margot call their father Pim? If Anne was German, why did she live in Holland?

Reading Anne Frank: The Biography, then, was something of a revelation. Melissa Müller’s updated biography includes new letters and information not yet public when she originally published it in 1998. She delves into the Franks’ lives before German occupation, painting a portrait of a happy, ordinary family: Otto and Edith Frank were doting parents who sought the best education for their girls. Margot was the studious, pretty older sister. Anne was the tempestuous attention-seeker who loved movies and spending time with her girlfriends.

Müller also traces in heartbreaking detail Otto Frank’s increasingly desperate attempts to save his family as the threat of Nazi Germany became clear: first moving to Amsterdam, then seeking to emigrate to the United States, and finally stowing away in the back area of his business’ warehouse.

Müller wisely doesn’t recount in much detail the Franks’ time in the annex—there simply isn’t much to add to Anne’s thorough diary—choosing instead to analyze Anne’s insightful writing and add context where needed. She also devotes considerable space to the question of who might have told the authorities about the hidden Jews at 263 Prinsengracht. This is, unfortunately, a question that may ultimately go unanswered.

Anne Frank has become such a global symbol that it’s easy to forget she was a real girl. Müller’s meticulous research and humane writing remind us that when she should have been exploring her world and coming into her own, the teenage Anne was not allowed to even open a window or move freely for fear of warehouse workers hearing her footsteps. Yet not even nightly air raids and the constant threat of being discovered could break her spirit. “I shall not remain insignificant,” she wrote on April 11, 1944, just months before her family was discovered (Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945). “I shall work in the world for mankind.”

Like millions of American children, I read and reread Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, mesmerized by the journal of her two years spent in hiding from the Nazis. Yet the book always remained somewhat cryptic for my young mind: What exactly was an…

Fiction

Sisterly deception from the author of ‘Big Fish’

Review by Amy Scribner

Sisters Rachel and Helen live in Roam, a place that “felt like the abandoned capital of an ancient civilization: still a wonder to behold, out here in the middle of nowhere, but worn down, broken, nearly empty.”

At 17, Rachel is the younger of the sisters, blind since the age of 3 and cared for by Helen since their parents died in a car accident. Rachel is beautiful, while Helen “was ugly since the day she was born.” Their outsides match their insides: Rachel is pure and kind, and Helen is bitter and needy. She lets her younger sister believe that she is the ugly one, and that the world is too dangerous to ever venture outside of Roam. No one in Roam realizes the cruel hoax Helen has perpetrated, not even Jonah, the hapless local mechanic Helen’s been involved with since he was a teenager.

Rachel and Helen are sure they’ll spend the rest of their days together in Roam, settled by their great-grandfather, who made his fortune by building a silk factory and forcing Chinese immigrants to work for him. But Helen makes a miscalculation one day that gives Rachel the chance to see for herself whether she can survive on her own.

A creative writing professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose Big Fish was made into a Tim Burton movie in 2003, Wallace specializes in novels with a tinge of folklore. The Kings and Queens of Roam is a tall-tale jaunt that features a giant lumberjack, a tiny bartender who can see all of Roam’s ghosts (he prefers to call them old-timers) and a doctor convinced he can cure Rachel’s blindness with water from an underground river.

Wallace toggles between two equally compelling stories: that of the sisters and that of their great-grandfather, Elijah McAllister, who exploits his friend Ming Kai to get rich. Set in a mossy, haunted backwoods somewhere in America, this is a whimsical, tender tale about friendship, trust and the price of second chances.

Sisters Rachel and Helen live in Roam, a place that “felt like the abandoned capital of an ancient civilization: still a wonder to behold, out here in the middle of nowhere, but worn down, broken, nearly empty.”

At 17, Rachel is the younger of the sisters,…

Memoir

Opposites attract

Review by Amy Scribner

What happens when a raging liberal feminist Latina starts dating a conservative, traditional New Mexican rancher? You get The Feminist and the Cowboy, a turbulent memoir by best-selling writer Alisa Valdes that is by turns thought-provoking and exhausting.

Divorced with a young son, Valdes meets “the cowboy”—that’s what she calls him throughout the book—via an online dating service. She’s skeptical, having been raised by ultra-hippies who think those who watch Fox News are dumb, evil or both.

“The list of things they hated was quite long and occupied most of our family dinnertime conversation,” Valdes writes. “It included the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, Capitalist Pigs, Phyllis Schlafly, Fascist Pigs, John Wayne, Conservative Pigs, Imperialist Pigs, Colonialist Pigs, The Rich, Racists, Religion, Sexist Pigs, Lawrence Welk, and Displays of Patriotism Anywhere but Communist Countries and Indian Reservations.”

But the cowboy is incredibly handsome and persistent, convincing Valdes to let him travel from the rural ranch into Albuquerque for a date. What follows is a stormy relationship marked by yelling matches, tantrums, steamy sex, repeated breakups and anguished text message exchanges. When Valdes finds out the cowboy is still dating another woman, she comes completely unglued. It culminates with an ultimatum: The cowboy insists that Valdes drop the drama and let him make the rules for their relationship.

She agrees.

“By forcing me to back down, the cowboy—and I realized this with a sense of astonishment—was actually forcing me to trust someone other than myself,” Valdes writes. “Seen in this light, the cowboy’s desire for ‘control’ was actually quite loving.”

Their relationship is so toxic that it’s hard to separate it from Valdes’ very smart analysis of how her ultra-feminist upbringing hamstrung her ability to trust a man or, really, anyone. By filtering her thoughts through the cowboy lens, she seems to be defending a relationship that is based largely on turmoil and one whopper of a power struggle.

Valdes has certainly earned her place as a noted writer: Nominated for a Pulitzer as a staff writer for the Boston Globe, she has more than a million books in print, including The Dirty Girls Social Club. It’s why her decision to bare all in this less-than-flattering portrait is all the more fascinating. Throughout the book, Valdes comes across as bitter, immature and self-destructive. And yet, she also shows that she is smart, very funny and brutally honest about both her strengths and shortcomings. Ultimately, her candor is somehow the best and worst thing about this very revealing memoir.

What happens when a raging liberal feminist Latina starts dating a conservative, traditional New Mexican rancher? You get The Feminist and the Cowboy, a turbulent memoir by best-selling writer Alisa Valdes that is by turns thought-provoking and exhausting.

Divorced with a young son, Valdes meets “the…

Memoir

From humble origins to the heights of power

Review by Amy Scribner

One brother served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and is now mayor of Chicago. Another is a bioethicist and White House health advisor. The third is a Hollywood power agent.

How do three such accomplished men come from one family? That’s the question at the center of Brothers Emanuel, a lovely memoir from the eldest brother, Ezekiel (the bioethicist). Certainly their parents had their hands full with three rough-and-tumble boys (indeed, there did seem to be an inordinate number of episodes in which one or more of the boys had a near brush with injury after bouncing off a bed).

But Benjamin and Marsha Emanuel also had high expectations for their sons. Benjamin, an Israeli immigrant, was a respected Chicago pediatrician who met Marsha, a radiology technician, at a Chicago hospital. They moved to Tel Aviv, where Benjamin offered medical care to five far-flung kibbutzes, before settling back in Chicago to raise their boys. Deeply involved in the civil rights movement, they regularly hosted community meetings in their living room, where the boys would listen from behind the sofa.

“Undoubtedly this experience of eavesdropping on activists helped instill in us both a moral sensibility and the desire to do something about a problem whenever we could,” Emanuel writes. “It is not hard to see Rahm’s devotion to improving Chicago Public Schools and my work on universal health-care coverage as outgrowths of witnessing these meetings in our house.”

The Emanuels also set up a “children’s study” where the brothers could do their homework and learn the art of strategy through cutthroat games of chess with dad. “Winning became so important that we each deliberately sought out the particular hobbies, sports and career interests that fit our abilities and in which we could excel,” Emanuel explains. “Life was about competition, and if you couldn’t finish at the top in one pursuit, you found the game where your talent allowed you to win.”

But adversity helped shape them, too. Emanuel recalls a summer when he and a friend biked over to the local country club to apply for a summer caddy job, only to be turned down because he was Jewish.

Brothers Emanuel is a clear-eyed, candid memoir that is unique and yet quintessentially American. It’s the story of young boys who were given a fair shot, took a few hits along the way, and made something of themselves.

One brother served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and is now mayor of Chicago. Another is a bioethicist and White House health advisor. The third is a Hollywood power agent.

How do three such accomplished men come from one family? That’s the question at…

NonfictionHumor

One is silver and the other’s gold

Review by Amy Scribner

Julie Klam admits from the outset of Friendkeeping that she is a middle-aged person who uses the term “BFF” without irony. In other words, she takes her friendships very, very seriously, and tends to them like the treasures they are. It is significant that her most meaningful friendships date back to “prehistoric times, when people had big Michael Douglas Wall Street cell phones, with no texting and no personal computing or e-mail, IMing, tweeting or Facebooking. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; in order to communicate, we actually had to pick up the phone and call each other.”

This book is about what makes friendships work or fail, and why they are as essential to our happiness as love, or chocolate, or “Dallas” coming back on TV. Klam is funny. Not cute or amusing, but laugh-out-loud, borderline too-much-information funny, whether she’s writing about what to do when you hate your friend’s boyfriend or reminiscing about the time she, er, needed a hand in the restroom during her wedding reception. When she recalls how she and her friend Jancee stood in the toilet stall, laughing so hard no sound came out of their mouths, you will likely be doing the same.

This book is about why friendships are as essential to our happiness as love, or chocolate, or "Dallas" coming back on TV.

Klam also is not above admitting to her occasional less-than-friendly moments, which keep the book nicely balanced. When her aggressively vegetarian friend visits, “she walks into my kitchen, she picks up every box, can, or package and scans the ingredients, shaking her head and slapping her forehead, tsking, muttering in Yiddish,” Klam writes. “Sometimes if I know she’s coming over I’ll stop at the deli and get a box of pink Hostess Sno Balls just to give her a little something to do.”

It seemed Klam had found her niche as an essayist with two fine collections (2010’s You Had Me at Woof and 2011’s Love at First Bark) that were ostensibly about dogs, but were really about life, love and purpose. With Friendkeeping, Klam proves that she is no one-trick pony (or pooch).

Julie Klam admits from the outset of Friendkeeping that she is a middle-aged person who uses the term “BFF” without irony. In other words, she takes her friendships very, very seriously, and tends to them like the treasures they are. It is significant that her…

Fiction

A golden girl in Hollywood’s Golden Age

Review by Amy Scribner

The titular character in the superb Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures was born Elsa Emerson in 1920s Wisconsin: a blue-eyed, curvy blonde whose farmer parents also ran the county theater. Elsa was destined to be on stage, starring in numerous local productions. After a tragedy befalls the family, Elsa finds even greater escape in acting, marrying a young actor passing through town on his way to Hollywood. Her husband struggles in the burgeoning studio system, but when Elsa meets his boss Irving Green at a party, he rechristens her Laura Lamont and sets about making her famous.

It doesn’t take long. The screen loves Laura, and as her star rises, her husband’s fades. They divorce and she marries Irving, completing her transformation from small-town girl to glamorous 1940s Hollywood icon. Still, she wonders, was she really Laura Lamont, or was the wide-eyed girl from Wisconsin still inside somewhere?

“She was always two people at once, Elsa Emerson and Laura Lamont. They shared a body and a brain and a heart, conjoined twins linked in too many places to ever separate. Elsa wondered whether it would always be that way, or whether bits of Laura would eventually detach themselves, shaking off Elsa like a discarded husk.”

This is Emma Straub’s first novel, and it is a marvel. Her silken writing conjures images of old Hollywood, all red lipstick and Glenn Miller, but even more impressively, Straub paints a vivid portrait of a woman torn between her desire for fame and what she must leave behind to win it.

RELATED CONTENT
Read an interview with Emma Straub for Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures.

The titular character in the superb Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures was born Elsa Emerson in 1920s Wisconsin: a blue-eyed, curvy blonde whose farmer parents also ran the county theater. Elsa was destined to be on stage, starring in numerous local productions. After a tragedy…

NonfictionSelf-HelpLifestyles

Bring happiness home

Review by Amy Scribner

It seemed that Gretchen Rubin said everything there was to say about happiness in her 2010 blockbuster, The Happiness Project, in which she spent a year creating and testing theories of happiness. But it turns out there was one facet of happiness left for Rubin to plumb: that within your own four walls.

The wonderfully thought-provoking Happier at Home isn’t about making your home prettier or less cluttered—although Rubin does devote some time to ridding her home of “things that didn’t matter, to make more room for the things that did.” Rather, she spends nine months focusing on what she considers the aspects of home that impact happiness: possessions, marriage, parenthood, interior design (meaning self-renovation, not Home Beautiful), time, body, family, neighborhood and now.

Rubin’s forays into happiness are so riveting because she masterfully blends the science of happiness with her own personal experience and offers tools to embark on your own project. She makes you want to jump into your own happiness project before you even finish the book.

Rubin does sometimes veer into a sort of eccentricity that some readers may find hard to relate to. In her chapter on body, she builds what she dubs a Shrine to Scent: a silver tray bearing a collection of unusual perfumes and air fresheners. Her bigger point is that Proustian memories evoked by the senses can bring happiness. But to me, a Shrine to Scent seems a little silly, just one more thing in my house I’d have to dust.

In the end, the purpose of Happier at Home is exactly that: finding what makes you happier in your home, your neighborhood and your marriage, even if it’s not what would make anyone else happy. And if you’re happier, chances are those around you will be, too.

It seemed that Gretchen Rubin said everything there was to say about happiness in her 2010 blockbuster, The Happiness Project, in which she spent a year creating and testing theories of happiness. But it turns out there was one facet of happiness left for Rubin…

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