Une certaine idée du bonheur

by Rachel Kadish, Céline Leroy (translator)

Universitaire new-yorkaise d'une trentaine d'années, Tracy Farber a décidé de vivre en retrait pour consacrer son existence à l'étude du bonheur. Allant à l'encontre d'une conception tragique de l'existence, elle est convaincue qu'une vie heureuse n'est pas forcément monotone et superficielle, qu'elle peut aussi être passionnée, profonde et palpitante. Lorsque, à l'abri de ses livres et de ses théories, elle dissèque l'existence de ses proches, sa thèse semble prometteuse. Mais quand sa vie personnelle est bouleversée par une rencontre amoureuse qui la pousse à quitter son poste d'" observatrice ", elle se rend vite compte que toutes ses positions intellectuelles ne lui sont pas d'un grand secours.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Academia, Novels, Chick Lit, Love

537 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

I often begin writing when something is bothering me. Years ago, I was thinking about Virginia Woolf’s question: what if Shakespeare had had an equally talented sister?
Woolf’s answer: She died without writing a word.
What, I wondered, would it take for a woman of that era, with that kind of capacious intelligence, not to die without writing a word?
For one thing, she’d have to be a genius at breaking rules.
My novel The Weight of Ink reaches back in time to ask the question: what does it take for a woman not to be defeated when everything around her is telling her to sit down and mind her manners? I started writing with two characters in mind, both women who don’t mind their manners: a contemporary historian named Helen Watt and a seventeenth century Inquisition refugee named Ester Velasquez. It’s been a delight working on their story.
The Weight of Ink is my third novel, but I’ve also written two other novels and one novella, plus a few dozen essays and stories. Whether I’m writing fiction or nonfiction, I put words to paper because it's my way of metabolizing life. To paraphrase Henry James: I don't really know what I think until I see what I say.
Thanks for visiting this page, and for your interest in books.

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

I decided to read Tolstoy Lied, Kadish’s second published novel, because I found Kadish’s third and most recent novel, The Weight of Ink, to be totally compelling. The second novel is not nearly as good as her third novel, but the skills that will make The Weight of Ink so very good are already on display in this very different sort of a novel. The lie that Tolstoy allegedly told is the very famous first paragraph of his Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Kadish reveals in an online backstory that she had wondered if people really believed that all happy families were really that alike. When she was in her twenties, she wrote a short story, which she resurrected years later and turned it into this book, which is both a novel of ideas and a romantic comedy. https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/ba...

The protagonist of Tolstoy Lied is Tracy Farber, a young English Department professor who is in her tenure year at a major New York City university, which is not named but which just might be modeled on NYU. She is clearly a strong candidate. All her work is well above average for the university, her students highly regard her, she is advising a very strong graduate student’s dissertation work, and her tenure packet is super strong. At the same time she toys with the idea that happiness in literature is not attended to by academia, that perhaps a wide-ranging book based on Tolstoy’s lie as it has appeared in literature over the years is worth investigating, after she gets tenure, of course; she knows to keep that idea to herself as it goes against what is valued in the academy. For all her brilliance (and her goal of keeping her Tolstoy idea a secret), Tracy has an almost innocent insistence on ignoring all pragmatic advice. She remains independent and does what seems most important. And in a book like this one, that will lead her to make a series of mistakes, and the history of those drive the plotline.

At the same time, Tracy Farber has decided (at the age of 33) to remain single for the rest of her life. Her relationships in the past have not turned out well, and she feels she is happy as she is with a full professional and intellectual life and many close friends from all the stages of her life. But then she meets George, and bit-by-bit everything changes. He is from an entirely different background: he’s an escapee from a fundamentalist Christian family and she is a largely agnostic Jew. He works for a nonprofit helping poor kids in public schools while she is a professor at a major university. But they do share interests in doing what is right. She is forced to recognize that she is falling in love, and the rest of the novel follows the several different stages of their love story. And those drive the romantic comedy plotline.

While Kadish’s writing chops are clearly present in this novel, her skills are not quite strong enough to blend those two genres, especially since the audiences for those two genres do not overlap all that much. Many lovers of a good romance story will grow impatient with all the literary allusions and academic politics. And these lovers spend so much time thinking about ideas and ethics, so that even the love story itself is heavily intellectualized. Lots of thinking and rethinking each step may even seem to some readers like showing off with a bunch of stuff no one cares about. Readers who love David Lodge novels (and others) that eviscerate academia may not consider the romantic plotline worthy. In any case, the one half of the book does seem to tug at the other. Despite these flaws, I found myself enjoying the book. I recognized many of the humorous academic battles and battlers. Even the love story wasn’t awful, although it was quite slow. Cautious recommendation; I’m sure each of you will be able to tell if this book is for you. Oh, and by the way, I just noted that Kadish’s first novel, From a Sealed Room is currently on the shelf at my local public library. I’ll be heading over there later today.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book kind of did a number on me. I finished it on the last day of a trip, when I was feeling sort of tired and a little sick. So: reading, but with vulnerabilities. The novel's heroine is a literature professor who wants to debunk Tolstoy's line from Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." She says that would mean that "a person must be unhappy in order to be interesting." So she tells us her engaging love story, which is really very well done. It feels so true -- exciting but not romanticized. A fleshy sort of love story, with the realness intact. She follows it past the early euphoria, through rough patches and a separation and back to equilibrium. So as in life, it's a big old log flume ride, and you go for it, but spend a lot of time wondering if it's worth the stress. In the meantime, there's great stuff about academic politics and good secondary characters. Just an enjoyable read.

The problem for me is that she begins as a happy and contented single woman. Not shunning romantic encounters but not actively seeking them either. Good naturedly fending off efforts by friends and family to get her paired off. She got my hopes up that we might somehow return to happy singlehood, instead of ending up with, as Bridget Jones calls them, the smug marrieds. Which is where everybody always ends up, now and forever, world without end amen. She winds up her story with the "what I've learned" chapter, which she has earned. But there's an air of "now that I love, I'm doing life's real work" that grates. Her lover's proposal of marriage represented an invitation to "stop watching the mess of human desire from the shoreline."

Sigh. I know, it said "love story" right on the cover. What did I expect? I'm such a sponge -- I absorb all these absurd messages and take them to heart. What am I, 13 years old? I can't think for myself? But these repeated demonstrations of how I am living but half a life in my singledom are so very, very tiring. Love can kiss my ass.

[M · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only thing worse than chick lit is pretentious chick lit. This book was so awful - it was actually recommended to me and apparently I will need to be more selective about what suggestions I honor. I agree with the premise, that that dumb line about happy families being all alike is not true and the implication that there is nothing interesting about happiness, while being something I myself have often said, is certainly simplistic - however, to create an entire novel about that is in itself a pretty bland idea, or at least it became bland. First of all, if you're trying to get me to root for a heroine, maybe make her an actual human being rather than this annoying academic who goes on for pages and pages in a rather boring and narcisistic fashion about her musings of various literary works (maybe I don't know that many hard core academics, but I'm sure SOME of them manage a conversation without dropping lines from Dickenson, or rather, Emily) or it documents the ever so clever and snappy (read: trite and contrived) dialogue of her stupid dates with her equally one dimensional, plot device rather than a character boyfriend, like I care, who proceeds to be an absolute freak for the purposes of building drama but then because it all has to turn out all right in the end (this is a book about happiness not being trite, after all - and oh, sorry if I spoiled the ending) he ends up being good again - not likeable, mind you, because none of these characters have actual dimension and are all a bunch of cardboard pieces.
This book was bad from the start and did nothing to redeem itself.

[Katherine Marple · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the opening pages: "For people who claim to want happiness, we Americans spend a lot of time spinning yarns about its opposite. Even the optimistic novels end the minute the good times get rolling... Let me be clear: some of my best friends are tragic novels. But someone's got to call it like it is: Why the taboo? What's so unspeakable about happiness?"

Tolstoy Lied was impressively honest. Rachel Kadish brilliantly pulls out the American obsession of unhappiness/ tragedy/ injustice/ wavering state of mankind- and she pokes fun at it, dissects it and reveals its reasons. Through her main character, Tracy, I discovered why I love love and also why it hurts so much, even when I'm "happy." No matter what I do, I will always be sacrificing something in order to keep something else. There is never a PERFECT solution to anything. However, with love, when considered cautiously and carefully, it is totally worth all of the extra crap that comes along with it.

I was highly impressed, also, with Kadish's use of vocabulary and intellectual conversations between the characters. I love being smart, and I was not let down while reading the thoughts of each of the characters.

Brilliantly written and very inspirational. If you're a love of books like I am, or even like Tracy is, then you will love this story too.

[Superstition Review · Rating 5 out of 5]

The moment I fell in love with the novel Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story by Rachel Kadish would be halfway through page six. Before that point the novel was well-written commentary on literature critiquing as delivered by (if it can be said without unnecessary repetition) an intelligent and sarcastic narrator (as both so often go together that they become one). But her passionate defense of books, and her description of how an addiction forms for the sound of pages turning much the way growing up by the sea attunes one to the constant waves, was my first glimpse at what lay beneath the snarky surface.

One hundred or so pages later, I realized that revealing character depths is one of the novel’s strengths. To borrow the Shrek metaphor, people are like onions and the novel peels them away one layer at a time. Yolanda, introduced as a man-catching appearance-focused woman, carries herself with devastated beauty as an actress and notably provides sage advice to Tracy in her relationship with George after an almost-argument. Jeff, a hardened cynic, is willing to abandon academia entirely for the man he loves and ruin his cultivated reputation for his friendship with Tracy. Elizabeth, a slip of a graduate student, breaks into the library after hours to continue her research. The novel is not without surprises because the well-developed characters are full of them.

It is not only their depths but their flaws that render Kadish’s characters lifelike. Before George revealed his “traditional” views on how he believes a woman should want a family and should prioritize her career above that family, the romance between him and Tracy seemed unreal with them bonding at first sight and quickly progressing to in-depth conversations and amazing sex. Seeing a flaw that could draw Tracy’s ire was the first moment I believed that this relationship between them could be real – anyone can be perfectly charming until you get to know them, and it’s when the charm wears off that you find out how much you really like them.

Despite much of its plot being a play upon borrowed romantic conventions, I’m not sure I would be so quick to classify this as a romance novel; while I can’t deny there’s romance, I see it more as a novel about relationships, not just the one Tracy has with George but with everyone else around her. Much of the novel functions according to Gardner’s definition of metafiction or a deconstruction, in that it takes language and ideas apart to examine their inner workings. The typical idea of a romantic ending, which much like a comedy ends with a marriage, is sporked by Kadish without mercy, as well as American literature’s use of tragedy and its avoidance of happiness in Tracy’s discovery of the spiked plant she comes to call her happiness. It casts doubts on traditional romantic ideals (If a guy gives a girl who hates flowers roses, is that really romantic? Should a woman be expected to prioritize family over career, and pressured into doing so?). But when it comes to the romance novel’s purpose, to make the reader fall in love not only with a person but with the idea of romance itself, Kadish succeeds in a manner worthy of worship.

By Sarah Anderson

[cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost didn’t finished this book. The first third was wonderful and funny and intense.

This academic, tenure-focused woman is the perfect character to use to describe the darkly comic aspects of academe. I know this portrayal to be true. Also true in PHD level literature is that dissertations have become more and More about less and less, forcing one to focus great importance on minutiae.

Halfway through the book, our main character displays this same kind of thinking to a budding romance. Well, at that point, I got so exasperated with her inability to see any big picture and her necessity to name and catalog every action and emotion, that I got disgusted.

Read on...don’t give up. As her world begins to collapse she is forced to deal with instinct and is better off for it.

But their is no perfect ending. No control or unbreakable rules for life or love or career or choices.

She doesn’t change who she is and is still mightily flawed but she begins to understand how that is true of everyone and everything.

This book is good for thought and dances in my head. From feminism to career planning to love to friendship to achievement to history and more.

A very good read.

[Rachel Pollock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love that Rachel Kadish writes books about women who don’t show up in fiction much. The academic drama in this is spot on, at times exhaustingly so, and I didn’t figure out the reveal ahead of time. Not for everyone, but well-done.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had I not been feeling terrible for 4 days of my spring break with ear infections in both ears, I probably would not have finished this book. Although, in Kadish's defense, the chances of me falling in love with a book immediately after reading my most-loved Franny and Zooey are slim to none.

Basically, I felt like she's just recently realized that love/feminism/companionship/art/religion are- at times- paradoxical, and- at most times- messy. It's all well and good that she's realized these things and fit them into a neat story about her falling in love on my current stomping ground of NYC, but I'd much rather have read a book by Salinger... who had discovered these nuances of life long ago, has meditated upon them for some time, and writes about how to (or how not to) move forward in a life full of contradictions.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, does not want!

Pretentious, condescending pseudo-intellectual crap. Basically chick-lit, but not even that well-written. Kadish attempts to gain ballast by spewing her sophomoric word-vomit from the mouth of an "I'm way cooler than this petty academia" professor whose very "I'm way cooler"-ness defeats the purpose of the whole critique. A great read for people who really wish they were reading pulp but want to look smart.

[Nima · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the basic argument about whether only stories with sad endings could be considered good literature. This has long been something which I felt was a limiting parameter in how we evaluate what is considered quality writing. This is well written, nicely paced mystery and love story. One of my favorites.

[Darshan Elena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite her investment in feminist literary criticism, Kadish succumbs to the trope of the magical black man in this waste of a novel.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't understand how a writer of such obvious talent could write such a mundane book.

[Sunhawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular book, like peering through an open window into upper level academe (confirming me in my decision not to climb through THAT window!) The premise, as expressed in the book's title and first lines, relieves the reader of any anxiety that this is going to end sadly. What a good way to set up enough tension to keep the story wound tight: have Tracy, our protagonist, meet George, her ideal partner, and then have him absent himself on spurious grounds; all along we know that a joyous reunion is inevitable.
Without George, Tracy is adorable, but with him, she's spectacular. "You think about mortality," she says to George during an early date. [Yes, I do; don't you?] "Personally, I like a little denial," she continues. "I concede I have a bladder; it's made itself evident. I suspect, though, that I might not have a liver -- it's never so much as cleared its throat. I certainly don't have islets of Langerhans." A couple of paragraphs on, a bit of internal dialogue, "The beauty of life is in denying mortality, not arranging your life around it. Soaring has everything to do with amnesia about the ground. Why shouldn't we do it as long as possible?" [p177]
Seen through the novel's window, academic politics, and our heroine's honesty, add to the tension in a fascinating way, keeping Tracy busy while George is away: a senior colleague's life is scrambled, and threatens Tracy's bid for tenure. There's tension between tradition, in the form of elderly, inflexible professors, and the reality of younger staff in tune with a younger generation of students -- the classic tension in a university between providing a good education to students and a secure place for professors. Stubbornly introspective, our Tracy is constantly examining and criticizing herself; we see this story as much more than merely a love story.
George returns; a difficult reunion: "Don't think it's easy. We stumble, clash, retreat. Laughter resurfaces slowly. Anger surges and had to be pried loose. Love may be my religion, but I am (he was right) irretrievably Jewish. And skepticism is part of the believer's duty." [p455]
An engagement ring winds the tension, setting Tracy off. Does wearing it mark her as George's territory? "Feminism taught me to critique the world, but not how to live in it. Relationships are sacrifice, my aunt Rona mentions casually at the end of a phone conversation; and I set down the receiver and glare at my office bookcase, outraged: no one in years of women's studies colloquia ever mentioned this. You cannot mention feminism and voluntary personal sacrifice in the same sentence. It's against the law. Feminism has been too busy rebounding from millennia of oppression and establishing our right to be all we can be to acknowledge that every human being -- every human being who wants to live in relationship to others -- gives up some portion of her wide-open vista." Finally, she decides to wear the ring.
A little later, hurtling with George down a highway away from academic disappointment, an epiphany: "People misunderstand happiness. They think it's the absence of trouble. That's not happiness, that's luck. Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble. No two people have the same trouble, or the same way of metabolizing it. Q.E.D.: No two people are happy in the same way. Even Tolstoy was afraid to admit this, and I don't blame him. Every day, people smarter than I, wallow in in safe tragedy and pessimism, shying from what really takes guts: recognizing how much courage and labor happiness demands." [p475] Up in the corner of my tablet (I'm reading this on Hoopla) there could be a flashing notification: Author's message! Authors message!
Rachel -- the intimacy of this book lets me feel I'm on a first name basis with the author -- made me laugh out loud several times with wit, unexpected insight, simple delight in a perfect turn of a phrase. This book is a little masterpiece, and one of my best ten all-time books.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an ambitious attempt to integrate two complex storylines. One is a love story of two 30 something people trying to foster their relationship while keeping their respective problematic pasts and differences in values and outlooks on life from messing things up. The other is about one of them, a woman professor, trying to navigate her way through the internecine politics and toxic interpersonal dynamics between the faculty of a university English department.

While I found that Kadish largely succeeded at this, there were times when her portrayals suffered from too much detail. It is rare for me to think that a book of less than 330+ pages seems too long. There were moments, however, when Tolstoy Lied felt that way because of the lengthy, in depth descriptions. But for the most part her depictions in a straightforward readable prose were insightful, highly believable, and at times quite poignant. The internal dialogues that the lead woman character who is also the narrator had with herself about love, her friendships, her family, her work and career, etc demonstrated a lot of psychological sophistication and insight on the author’s part. I could readily see how this book foreshadowed the kind of skillful writing and character development Kadish demonstrated in The Weight of Ink.

The other aspect of TL which I found annoying at times was the author’s references to literature. Not being familiar with famous American novelists meant that I did not grasp some of what she was alluding to. As I am admittedly not a fan of poetry I also found these elements of the book to be less than appealing. While some Goodreads reviewers accused Kadish of being pretentious for including these elements in the book, I would not go that far. I think it was more a matter of her wanting to incorporate this aspect of her education and life into her writing. Given my more pedestrian tastes and limited knowledge these things just did not appeal to me.

Fortunately, these deficits were relatively minor. Overall, I enjoyed reading the book enough to give it a 4 star rating. I am pleased to have discovered Kadish and look forward to reading more of her work in the future. She is a talented and imaginative storyteller.

[Mary Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read Rachel Kadish's wonderful The Weight of Ink before I read her earlier novels or I might never have picked it up. From a Sealed Room (1998), her debut novel, was pretty awful. This one from 2006 is better than that, but it is way too long, and the protagonist, in her 30s and supposedly a respected professor of English literature, thinks and behaves like an immature adolescent.

[Janis Durelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well written. A real pleasure to read not only for her mastery of the written word but the story/premise were both well thought out.

[Pam C · Rating 2 out of 5]

This really didn't work for me. Was I supposed to like the love interest? The main character's friends? Colleagues? Family? Grad student? Because I didn't.

[Tori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another random library find. The premise is something I've wondered about and discussed with some of my other reader friends: are happy people inherently uninteresting, and therefore not worth writing about? While the book sounds like (and is) fancy chick lit, I was willing to give it a swing to see if it came to anything worthwhile. Unfortunately, it doesn't prove much of anything, except that happiness is difficult to find, and no one is ever truly 100% happy, except for maybe a brief, shining moment. There is always something to worry about, some conflict to resolve or work past. Our lives are guided by conflict and its resolution, otherwise there would be no push to change, evolve and grow as individuals. While it is perhaps a little glib for Tolstoy to report that happy people are all alike, the underlying principle is true: conflict is interesting. Stasis is not.

Also uninteresting: listening to someone endlessly wittering on about their relationship. Call me jaded if you like, but that gets old quick.

[Fanona · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can relate to the ins & outs of relationship building but theres more screaming signs of " get out & dont do it " that are really uncomfortable yet often common in hetero relationships. This guy is too controlling bordering on gaslighting & shes doing way too much emotional labor, especially for a 3 month long one. Im not sure i consider her friends & family being helpful with their attitudes & advice either.
Its better than typical pulp romance but i sure dont like too many of the characters.

[treehugger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh the beautiful smart language, the satire of workplace/academic politics, the hilarious gay professional ally...

Downsides: trite love descriptions, disappointing closure to romantic climax, possibly incorrect depiction of bipolar disorder? So much self doubt, and lots of obfuscation in characters' thoughts and dialogue so that there were a few passages I read more than 4 times and still didn't know what I was expected to take away from it...

Overall, great smart (yet light enough) read

[Myersakrawiec · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the behind-the-scenes look at academics, English department, and the premise that no one wants to read about "the happily ever after", but I felt that I could not relate to the main character's fear of commitment and marriage. Also, I felt that she and her fiance were very dissimilar and that is why she was so fearful of marrying him. Could have been better if I had liked the main characters more!

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overwrought and pretentious. Almost abandoned this one a hundred pages in, but really just wanted to finish it. There are some good things about it. Strong female characters who are great friends to each other. If the reader is not well-read, however, she will not understand all the literature references. To be honest, I am well-read and I found them tiresome and continually skipped parts to finish the book. I don't think I missed anything as those parts did not really move the story along.

[Kerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

A reviewer coined main character as an ‘annoying academic’, spot on. Very self involved, ruminates details of her life ad nauseam. One redeeming idea was her progression to a flaming, self-righteous feminist to rethinking her total immersion in that ideology once she truly falls in love with a dreaded man and realizes they’re just built with different ingredients. Wasn’t a fan of ‘Weight of Ink’ from this author either.

[Lora · Rating 2 out of 5]

2-1/2 stars. I like that much of the book seems to be mocking academia and the dominant premise that happiness is uninteresting. "Every day brilliant people, people smarter than I, wallow in safe tragedy and pessimism, shying from what really takes guts: recognizing how much courage and labor happiness demands."

[Melizzard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the first of three books I read last fall that I picked to read together that had a feminist theme.

I had really high hopes for this one but ultimately felt like it turned out to be quite predictable. It was almost as if it tried not to be then the author got tired and just gave in.

[Molly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the premise and the first 10 pages. Then it lost me in the minutiae of academic politics and brushed aside all the interesting bits of the love story with a few off hand remarks. Not impressed. Unlikely to read more by this author.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the book overall, I found the main character to be annoying and pretentious. It also seemed to drag on, and I was forcing myself to get to the end rather than feeling excited to find out how it ends. I most likely wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Not the worst, but not impressive.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Expected something much more. This was a chick lit romance dressed up in elbow patches.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok. Held my interest long enough to be a diversion from the problems of the day but nothing of substance. Only read this book if you are bored.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful writing but a wee bit overdone.