My Happy Life [Paperback]

Lydia Millet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2007

At the opening of My Happy Life, the unnamed narrator has been abandoned in a locked room of a deserted mental hospital. She hasn't seen the nice man who brings her food in days; so she's eaten the soap, the toothpaste, and even tried to eat the plaster on her walls — a dietary adventure that ended none too well. This woman's story, covering decades and spanning continents, is tragic, yet she is curiously at peace, even happy. Despite a lifetime of neglect, physical abuse, and loss, she's incapable of perceiving slight or injury. She has infinite faith in the goodwill of others, loves even her enemies, and finds grace and communion in places most people wouldn't dare to brave. Lauded by both critics and readers, My Happy Life consistently surprises and excites with its original vision of a unique woman whose rich interior life protects her from the horrors of external reality.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The unreliable narrator tends to get a bum rap for committing a multitude of sins against trusting readers. But what happens when the narrator is impaired? In Lydia Millet's My Happy Life, a nameless woman with a mental deficiency is locked inside an abandoned asylum. To pass the time between staying alive and attempting escape, she scribbles her life story on the walls that separate her from the rest of the world.

In childhood she catapults from one charitable home to another, abused by fellow residents and schoolmates, and eventually winds up sleeping on park benches. As a young woman she falls prey to a sadistic wealthy patron who kidnaps her. With graceful and often poetic simplicity, Millet thrusts us into the childlike mind of a person who has a limited ability to make herself understood in an unforgiving world. This woman's story--covering decades and spanning continents--is utterly tragic, yet her capacity for joy shines throughout. It's quite an about-face from Millet's last novel, the silly and satirical George Bush, Dark Prince of Love. Despite its many abstractions (Where are we? How much time has passed?), the book flows easily and doesn't step outside this determined, faithful woman's story for a second. Her character may not have a name, but readers will ultimately trust her--in happiness and in sorrow. --Emily Russin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Occasionally a book comes along that is truly written (as writers are instructed books should be) as if it were the writer's last: Millet's sad and infinitely touching third novel (after the absurdist George Bush, Dark Prince of Love) is such an extraordinary work. Brief and unsparingly forthright, the story is told from the miraculously cheerful perspective of a battered, neglected, friendless woman who is locked inside a windowless madhouse cell. The institution is apparently scheduled for demolition; the narrator's last caretaker, Jim, has not returned to feed her in some time. All she possesses are a few broken-down items she carries with her everywhere and that tell her "happy life" story: a cardboard box labeled Brown Ladies Narrow 8, in which she was left at a foundling home as an infant; a broken tooth from habitual pummelings she incurred as a "meat sandwich" at the hands of her fellow orphans; a frayed orange towel she used to sleep in, in parks; and, most horribly, a torn corner of one of the bills that were left to her by a rich older man who locked her away, beat her regularly with a "historical instrument" and later stole her baby. Despite the ghastly physical scars the narrator bears from neglect and abuse at others' hands, she remains a na‹f at heart, prone to forgive human harshness as people's inability "to know their own strength." Most incredibly, Millet has managed a few light-handed, affecting strokes to give her narrator charm and even humor ("Excuse me," she says when brutally overcome). The details of her fabulous, tortured life are precise and quirky, and she is always allowed to tell her story in her own childlike way to startling ironic effect in a novel that stands as a courageous and memorable achievement. (Jan. 9)Forecast: Millet's satirical voice is distinctive, but her work tends to resist easy classification. This novel represents a definite leap for her, and should raise her profile, though it is probably too grim to appeal to a truly wide audience.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (April 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933368764
• ISBN-13: 978-1933368764
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #856,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ghosts, January 27, 2002

By 

MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Happy Life: A Novel (Hardcover)

"I have always wished the present to resemble memory: because the present can be flat at times, and bald as a road. But memory is never like that. It makes hills of feeling in collapsed hours, a scene of enclosure made all precious by its frame."
It is the Narrator (never identified) who makes the comment above in Lydia Millet's, "My Happy Life," a woman who has had almost no real happiness in her life and who always recovers from whatever blows and misfortunes life deals her without any ill feelings or rancor. She is resilient to a fault..always looking on the bright side, always making excuses for those who mistreat her.
We all know this woman. She's the one who cleans our hotel rooms or offices. She's the one with the bad haircut and out-of-style coat whose smile we do not return on the street. She's the one we hope never to become.
But Millet makes her a heroine with a profound sense of insight and razor sharp introspection...a kind of life experience idiot savant. And in the end....we, at the very least, admire her and maybe even secretly want to be her.
The Narrator takes us to her bosom early on when she says: "so now I seem alone...But I am not alone...I have You." And that she does through 150 pages of heart-wrenching bad luck and unspeakable misfortune. But nonetheless, the tone of the novel is sweet with the fragrance of a life fondly remembered.
Our Narrator is "Everywoman" and by extension Everyman: exploited, abandoned, discarded, imprisoned, rejected, made invisible by age. Millet seems to be saying: Look at this woman, Look at this Life, Look how she recovers and perserveres... Don't complain to me about your petty upsets and daily trials and tribulations! Here is how it is in the extreme...in a place where you can't fathom from where your next kind word or small affirmation will come; much less your next meal.
Along the way Millet composes some breathtaking phrases and descriptions: "So I was not alone. With me were the absent people. And all of them were not bodies but only the forms of all their sorrow and longing. By and by I felt what I had always known, that myself I was neither a city nor a rock, but only particles and figments. And like all people I was quite imaginary when I was alone. And alone we were all of us ghosts."
"My Happy Life" is anything but. And Lydia Millet has managed to write a fictional biography which is on the one hand scary, pitiful and pathetic while on the other, one of extraordinary beauty and unexpected humor and elegance.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of innocence never lost through age or time, January 7, 2006

By 

Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: My Happy Life: A Novel (Hardcover)

'My Happy Life' is about a life that has been anything but happy, but our nameless protagonist doesn't see it that way. When a State Hospital for the mentally ill is shut down, our nameless protagonist is left behind, forgotten, in a locked isolation cell.

She begins to write her story on the wall, talking to you as if you were there with her, and her story will stab at your heart even if it is a black shriveled heart. It will bleed for her, trust me.

Left as a newborn in a shoebox near an orphanage, she has never known anything other than state homes and the occasional foster home. Our protagonist comes across as being mentally slow, which may explain her ability to retain her innocence through constant physical and emotional abuse, even turning such abuse into what she feels is a caring connection with others. She simply does not see the bad in anybody.

From state homes to being kept at the mercy of an abuser, who gets her pregnant and then runs off with her baby, our protagonist somehow survives ever mean and vile dish that is handed to her, seeing only nourishment on silver platters.

The tale of her life is sad, poignant, beautiful, upsetting, dramatic, and tender. Millet's prose is stylish, rich, and smacks of true poetic talent. She pulls you into her characters life so quickly and completely that you will not be able to put the book down once you start. Don't worry, its only 150 pages, but the impact it will leave on your is far greater than the thickness of the book.

This is my first Lydia Millet book, and I am definitely buying more of her work. I consider 'My Happy Life' a must read, something for you to think about when you believe your life has gone all wrong because your DVD player broke and your Mercedes has a flat. Truly, a ten star book. Enjoy!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a visceral portraiture, March 3, 2002

By 

wayne sumstine (tucson az usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Happy Life: A Novel (Hardcover)

If you have enjoyed previous books by Lydia Millet, jettison your preconceptions. With "My Happy Life," she is now writing like someone who sold her soul to the devil and still came out on top in the bargain.

The novel is narrated by a haunting, isolated figure who seems to have stepped into, or perhaps out of a Francis Bacon painting, and somehow stakes an indisputably valid claim to uncharted regions of the psyche. This visceral portraiture simultaneously emphasizes a brutal and beautiful new reality. Like a Bacon masterpiece, Millet presents a mesmerizing, shocking supra-real view of humanity. The work defies categorization by establishing a new one against which others must now be measured. The book will stand as a significant contribution to literature.