Jackson did eventually begin a new novel — a funny, happy novel, in which a recently widowed woman abandons her old name, calling herself Angela Motorman, and embarks on a new life in a boarding house, unencumbered by pets, address books, souvenirs, or even friends.
"Home Cooking," which I am currently reading, is a collection of personal essays with recipes by Laurie Colwin, the late New Yorker contributor and the author of thrillingly happy novels of domestic urban life.
And I was very happy with the novel".
Stephen Elliott's novel Happy Baby (Picador) is set in the 70s and 80s in Chicago.
Katherine Shonk's first novel, "Happy Now?," chronicles Claire's life during the weeks following Jay's suicide.
White's first novel, Happy Valley (1939), was set in New South Wales and showed the influence of D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy.
The long arm of Hollywood is evident in a clever piece of promotion by Grasset, the publisher of Yann Queffélec's new novel, "Happy Birthday, Sara".
When Diogenes, a Zurich publishing house, brought out his first novel, "Happy Birthday, Turk!" in 1985, Germans got their first taste of an exotic flavor that soon proved addictive.
In Mr. Elliott's 2004 novel "Happy Baby," the protagonist describes returning to town after a long absence: "The new Mayor Daley welcomes me home, his face plastered across a billboard in front of the train station.
The other first-timer on the list to have set her book in Wales is Tiffany Murray, whose novel, Happy Accidents, described as by Boyd Tonkin in the Independent as a "psychedelic Cold Comfort Farm", tells the dark coming-of-age tale of Kate Happy, youngest member of a dysfunctional family living in a farm on the English-Welsh borders.
His latest novel, Happy Mutant Baby Pills, was published by HarperCollins.
