Happiness Falls: A GMA Book Club Pick - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Angie Kim moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. After graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy, she studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her debut novel, Miracle Creek, won the Edgar Award, the ITW Thriller Award, the Strand Critics’ Award, and the Pinckley Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and the Today show . Angie Kim lives in northern Virginia with her family. Klappentext "We didn't call the police right away. When Mia's father doesn't come home from a walk in the local nature reserve, she doesn't think much of it. He must've turned off his phone. Or his battery died. Or he probably stopped for an errand-but doing what exactly? Soon more questions arise and it becomes clear to Mia and her family that he is missing. Or is he?"-- Leseprobe One Locke, Bach, and K-­pop We didn’t call the police right away. Later, I would blame myself, wonder if things might have turned out differently if I hadn’t shrugged it off, insisting Dad wasn’t missing missing but just delayed, probably still in the woods looking for Eugene, thinking he’d run off somewhere. Mom says it wasn’t my fault, that I was merely being optimistic, but I know better. I don’t believe in optimism. I believe there’s a fine line (if any) between optimism and willful idiocy, so I try to avoid optimism altogether, lest I fall over the line mistakenly. My twin brother, John, keeps trying to make me feel better, too, saying we couldn’t have known something was wrong because it was such a typical morning, which is an asinine thing to say because why would you assume things can’t go wrong simply because they haven’t yet? Life isn’t geometry; terrible, life-­changing moments don’t happen predictably, at the bottom of a linear slope. Tragedies and accidents are tragic and accidental precisely because of their unexpectedness. Besides, labeling anything about our family “typical”—­I just have to shake my head. I’m not even thinking about the typical-­adjacent stuff like John’s and my boy-­girl twin thing, our biracial mix (Korean and white), untraditional parental gender roles (working mom, stay-­at-­home dad), or different last names (Parson for Dad + Park for Mom = the mashed-­up Parkson for us kids)—­not common, certainly, but hardly shocking in our area these days. Where we’re indubitably, inherently atypical is with my little brother Eugene’s dual diagnosis: autism and a rare genetic disorder called mosaic Angelman syndrome (AS), which means he can’t talk, has motor difficulties, and—­this is what fascinates many people who’ve never heard of AS—­has an unusually happy demeanor with frequent smiles and laughter. Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked. It’s one of my biggest faults and something I’m trying to work on. (To be honest, I don’t like shutting it down entirely because sometimes, those tangents can end up being important and/or fun. For example, my honors thesis, Philosophy of Music and Algorithmic Programming: Locke, Bach, and K-­pop vs. Prokofiev, Sartre, and Jazz Rap, grew from a footnote in my original proposal. Also, I can’t help it; it’s the way my mind works. So here’s a compromise: I’ll put my side points in footnotes. If you love fun little detours like Dad and me, you can read them. If you find footnotes annoying (like John) or want to know what happened ASAP (like Mom), you can skip them. If you’re undecided, you can try a few, mix and match.) So, anyway, I was talking about the police. The fact is, I knew something was wrong. We all did. We didn’t want to call the police because we didn’t want to say it out loud, much the same way I’m going around and around now, fixating on this peripheral issue of calling the police instead of just saying...

Product details

• Authors: Angie Kim
• Publisher: Hogarth US
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 26.09.2023
• EAN: 9780593448205
• ISBN: 978-0-593-44820-5
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 242 mm x 33 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature