The Answer Is No

by Fredrik Backman

He’s just happy. It wasn’t even particularly difficult. All he did was to remove the one thing that makes almost all people unhappy: other people. Whatever they want, the answer is no.

Lucas is happy. It’s not as hard as one might think to become, the hard part is just to keep being

it. It’s hard because it’s so easy to get in your head that if you are to be happy, you have to be happy exactly all of the time. And who in the world has the energy for that? Happiness can be exhausting. Honestly, it’s most often enough to just not be the opposite.

So, Lucas isn’t unhappy. That’s...