State of Happiness [Paperback]

Stella Duffy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2004

Duffy is best known for her sharp insights and sharper wit, and both are on display here...Brave, understated and unforgettable' DAILY MAIL When Jack and Cindy meet at a friend's party they are immediately attracted to one another. Cindy, a celebrated mapmaker, traces the contours of their relationship, from New York to LA, from first passion to real love. After five years together, Cindy and Jack think they have tested their love to its limits. But then Cindy falls dangerously ill, and the couple must face the hardest test of all. Told with wit, tenderness and unflinching honesty, STATE OF HAPPINESS is a captivating story of love and loss from a writer at the height of her powers. 'STATE OF HAPPINESS is a sharp, sobering cocktail spiked with metaphysic, immense good humour and understanding. Stella Duffy gets better and better' Ali Smith, author of HOTEL WORLD

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A cartographer with a taste for theories of place succumbs to cancer in this metaphorical tale of mortality and mapmaking. New Zealander Duffy's eighth novel (her first to be published in the U.S.) begins when Cindy Frier, author of a popular treatise on maps called Dis-location, meets Jack Stratton, a successful British news producer, at a party in New York City. Shortly after they become a couple, Jack receives a career-making promotion that takes him and Cindy to the beachy environs of Los Angeles. At this point, a third character enters the story: Cindy's cancer. Duffy strives hard for a distinctive narrative voice, veering from lyricism to purposefully stilted bluntness, with mixed results (on the progress of the couple's relationship: "Cindy and Jack thought that change, in the form of Jack and Cindy, looked pretty good"). But when the novel turns into a chronicle of Cindy's rapid decline, Duffy's tone steadies. Romance provides relief from the litany of treatments and side-effects, as do original ideas about the way illness insidiously etches its own map on our lives and bodies. The tale's tragic ending is telegraphed well in advance, but it's the path taken that counts in this artful if rather self-conscious novel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Convention dictates that romances have happy endings. The tragic ending of Duffy's modern love story is only one way it balks at convention. Cindy and Jack are focused as much on their careers as on their relationship. She, a successful cartographer and author, and he, a driven television journalist, squeeze one another into their busy schedules when they can. But when Jack takes a job in L.A., Cindy follows, then has little time to warm to California before she finds the lump that will irrevocably change their lives. Duffy successfully articulates both characters' voices. She also intersperses Cindy's lectures on mapmaking, and describes maps as "images as leaps of faith," as she captures the complex emotions brought on by terminal illness. This is the first of the New Zealand author's novels to be published in America, and readers here will surely appreciate Duffy's elegant and intelligent prose, which speaks to both their minds and hearts. Aleksandra Kostovski
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Virago (July 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844080234
• ISBN-13: 978-1844080236
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 7.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,892,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It made me hopelessly tearful..., December 30, 2004

By 

ameslovehater "Aimi Syazwani" (Malaysia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: State of Happiness (Hardcover)

At what I first thought was a fairly flimsy, not-so-interesting start of the story; what with the meeting, and work, and getting to know each other, I first found cindy and Jack to be boring people. Just another city couple, staying at each others apartment and so forth. Then, when the story delves an ocean's depth deeper into Cindy's character as being the intense, very deep-thinking cartographer she is, I pushed myself to connect with her. Jack was simply the good boyfriend catering to her best interests. At times I thought Cindy was being a little bit to self-centred, still Jack gave in to make her the queen she deserved to be to him. It's a perfect momentary self-satisfaction through reading thinking of the possibilities of a guy like Jack to be around in the real world. When Cindy fell sick, the whole tale went from deep to i'm-lost-in-the-Pacific intense. It carried on to the chapters where Cindy simply 'gave in' and lived through the beauty she created living with her terminal ailment, edging toward expiration. Jack was always by her side, bathed her, fed her, took her to the hospital and walks by the beach, crying with her, crying for her. Cindy was lost in a world of her own mind-authority, Jack was her neutralizer. She mapped her final life-period, Jack mopped her stains of ill. With all the deeds and powerful, to-cry-for love that kept popping up so many times during Cindy's sickness, readers can only make up the endings they'd want, but left broken when in the end stunned with the honest fact. We only read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent read, sad but so well written, February 2, 2005

By 

M. Kruft "BookClubBetty" (Baltimore, MD United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: State of Happiness (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book and I'll recommend it to friends. If you've ever lost anyone to cancer it's a must read, and if you haven't, well it is as well. Great narratives, so "real" -will look into more works by this author.