Happiness

By Will Ferguson

Edwin de Valu’s life isn’t exactly a dream. He doesn’t really like his job or his wife. He is an editor in the non-fiction department of a middling publishing house. Under pressure at a meeting to come up with something to fill a sudden hole in their publishing schedule, he pitches a self help book that has recently turned up on his desk with a score of other un-publishable works. The book winds up being published and, to his horror, the book actually works. It actually makes people happy. A consumer based society is not a good place for happiness to break out. Everyday more and more people are turned into bland, passionless, yet happy smiling zombies. As society breaks down, Edwin is desperate to find a cure or, at the very least, to kill the author.
The book takes a very long time to get going, probably about one hundred pages. It’s not that the reading of it slow going, it’s just that the plot takes a while to get going. After that though, things get really interesting. Ferguson’s style is wonderfully satirical. There are parts that really made me laugh out loud. Ferguson also sprinkles in numerous literary concepts that add to the fun. To see what he has come soon go to www.willferguson.ca