Happy Hour: A Novel

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Happy Hour is filled with charm, memorable insight, and witty aperçus, adding up to the realization that life, while unfair, is antic enough to be worth all the trouble.” Fun, decadent … a picaresque exploration of female friendship staged across a series of tableaus set in New York City during one particularly sweltering summer in the early 2010s.” What: The Exhibit is a versatile events space in Balham housing a cinema, studio, multiple alfresco spaces, bars and a kitchen. And with all of that going on, we’d certainly expect it to offer a half decent happy hour as part of the bundle, which it does: 2-4-1 on selected drinks e very day from 5pm to 7pm. Choose from pints of Amstel, prosecco, gin and tonics, espresso martinis or porn star martinis. This book is an absolute gem – useful, evidence-based, and a pleasure to read. Armed with the insights conveyed in Happier Hour, we can all find greater fulfillment in the time we have.”

Byron’s tale examines grief, blame and forgiveness, reclusiveness and loneliness, and does it with humour and sensitivity. Her characters have depth and appeal, displaying very human flaws and, in Franny’s case, occasionally disappointing the reader with poor behaviour. Her inner monologue is often darkly funny. Cassie Holmes is an expert on time, and this readable, practical book might just make you rethink how you spend yours.”Happy Hour is less a conventional coming-of-age story and more a flâneuse adventure...[it's] unique for portraying young women having fun without looming threats of moral or mortal punishment. Esmé Hogeveen, GARAGE Terrific advice from one of my favorite scientists about how to make best use of our most limited resource: time.” Profound ... At their core, books are about the beautiful, but here we have a book where our narrator is not only an observer of beauty but in possession of that beauty too. Ellen O'Donohue Oddy, Radical Art Review

Marlowe Granados’s Happy Hour is as refreshing as a gin fizz. It is a wild careening joyride through a hot sultry summer in New York in 2013, and it evokes that time with such sparkling specificity that you can feel the heat coming off the pavement. If you are looking for romance, ambition, glamour, and a story about what it means to be young and striving in the city, this is your song of the summer.” How can you ever really know someone? People change and are in a constant state of revealing themselves. To think you know everything about someone is to leave yourself vulnerable to surprise. A dreamy account of one heady summer, Marlowe Granados’s début is a dispatch from another land; not only New York City, but youth itself. Happy Hour is aptly titled – it’s an intoxicating book, at once heartbreaking and joyful.” Funny, profound and beautiful. Granados is brilliant on the intersections of social class, race, work, money, beauty and power. Jessica Andrews, Sheerluxe

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Byron puts her characters in difficult situations that make the reader stop and think about their own reaction to these situations. Also, Isa, like Lorelei Lee, is very self-aware and meta about what she is doing and the life she is living. If the many Gentlemen who routinely insist on comparing one’s appearance to that of Pocahontas can pay for a round of French 75s, what is to be gained by not availing oneself of this? It’s funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You’d think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to see you through it. With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, this stunning debut about a young ingénue in the big city is “as refreshing as gin fizz . . . a wild careening joyride through a hot sultry summer in New York” (Rachel Syme, The New Yorker). Profound … At their core, books are about the beautiful, but here we have a book where our narrator is not only an observer of beauty but in possession of that beauty too.”

Happy Hour is written as a diary and depicts a summer spent in New York City. The protagonist Isa Epley is a twenty-year old party girl, self-aware and pleasure-seeking, ready to have a good time with her best friend Gala Novak. Money might run tight, but that doesn't stop them from mingling with pretentious artists, confident entrepreneurs and preachy intellectuals.Being unattached is exhausting. I see it all the time. Whenever a woman comes into a room and people find out she has a significant other, it suddenly takes the sting out of her. She is no longer a threat. I don't know why, but that's how it is. Without that reassurance, people look at you like you're some kind of rogue, capable of doing anything. Dangerous, unpredictable, and suspicious. Though it can be tiring, I think it's the most powerful