Happiness and Love

Zeitgeist and timeless, cynical but not soulless, Dubno’s propulsive debut is for lovers of Thomas Bernhard, art over theory, and anyone who has ever wondered “What the hell am I doing here?” Fabulous! * Melissa Broder, author of Milk Fed * Zoe Dubno examines character and human relations in the same way an art critic looks at a painting. Digging deeper and deeper into the thoughts behind thoughts, feelings behind feelings and questioning everything, Happiness and Love is an ecstatic performance of heightened perception. * Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick * In Happiness and Love, Zoe Dubno viciously and delightfully skewers the vapid people – the neo-bohemians of the social media age – who masquerade their privilege as creativity. It is bracing and funny and fiercely clever, a first novel of extraordinary confidence and profoundly entertaining wickedness. * Orlando Whitfield, Nero-award listed author of All that Glitters * I loved this astute and hilarious skewering of New York’s psuedy cultural elite. Intelligent, relentless, nasty and fun, Happiness and Love is energising, vital and a total joy to read. * Francesca Reece, author of Voyeur * A single-paragraph diatribe in the tradition of Bernhard, Dubno's Happiness and Love turns disillusionment into an artistic rite of passage. Her voice is neurotic and laugh-out-loud mean, the narrator flinching at the sight of turmeric lattes and open relationships, weaponizing autofiction’s confessional mode not toward self-glorification, but toward a demolition of the ecosystems that once made the narrator feel special. * Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs *