Friday's Forgotten Reads: Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

Hello All!

Friday's Forgotten Reads was started by Patti Abbott:
"This is the first of what I optimistically hope will become Friday recommendations of books we love but might have forgotten over the years. I have asked several people to help me by also remembering a favorite book. Their blog sites are listed below. I also asked each of them to tag someone to recommend a book for next Friday. I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next."
Her blog, with some of her Forgotten Reads and links to many, many others, is http://pattinase.blogspot.com/ .

Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

My contribution to Friday’s Forgotten Reads is the above title. I read this for the first time sometime in the mid-1980s, and I think of it as one of the most wonderful love stories I’ve ever read. I read this book probably once a year, because the book and its characters bring me joy.

Happy All the Time is the story of cousins Guido and Vincent, and the women who become their wives, Holly and Misty, respectively. These two couples fall in love differently, define it differently, yet the couples compliment each other, and the friendships are truly cemented by the end of the book. I identify most with Guido, for the depth of love he feels for his sometimes mysterious wife, and with Misty, for her high defenses that keep love far away until she lets Vincent in. Laurie Colwin’s writing, especially in this novel, is humorous, with most of the supportive characters having idiosyncrasies that the reader finds funny and sweet. The friends and families of these two lovely and loving couples are perfect foils, and make Guido and Holly, Misty and Vincent more human.

The love stories I’ve found in Happy All the Time I have found rarely in other fictional couples—I’ll have to think on that, and get back to you.

I hope others will find the joy I’ve found in this book, and tell me about it.

Happy Reading!
Patti