So I have talked about gut punches when reading books before, but Silvera took it to a different level with this one—and this was his freakin’ debut novel!
I’ve known about Silvera for some time and even read his co-authored What If It’s Us? with Becky Albertalli, but this is the first time I’ve sought out his work. I came across it on a list of must-reads and so grabbed it when I saw it was available at my library.
I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect, but between what little I knew of the publication history and the introduction talking about how bittersweet the book was I felt like I was level set not to get my hopes up too much. One thing I was not expecting was the Atwood level speculative fiction of memory erasure and not getting that happily ever after but getting a well done you survived and may thrive one day, but we’re not going to tell you.
I fake-smile because everyone wants happiness for me as much as I want it for myself. (42)
More Happy Than Not is the story of Aaron Soto and his struggles with depression and internalized homophobia. There’s unrequited love, there’s what he thinks is real love, and suffering the consequences of trying to run away from who you are. Aaron and his friends get hurt throughout the novel, but that just seems like another chip on the shoulder for all of them growing up in the projects of NYC.
Silvera did a fantastic job of writing about how poverty can really get you down, but how people thrive within it and build communities and friendships to support each other. And the battles Aaron faced with depression and self-harm were for the most part off-page, but you could still feel their echoes in his day-to-day life.
Memories: some can be sucker punching, others carry you forward; some stay with you forever, others you forget on your own. You can’t really know which ones you’ll survive if you don’t stay on the battlefield, bad times shooting at you like bullets. But if you’re lucky, you’ll have plenty of good times to shield you. (255)
The speculative part of the novel is really subtly done and it sent me for a loop when it happened. I was so inside Aaron’s head and his point of view that the hints and clues that something was up just passed me by. I was floored and actually had to take a day off reading the book when I realized what had happened. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep reading it was traumatic at the moment, but then also traumatic to have all the memories rushing back.
If there was one relationship I was rooting for more than any other it was Aaron and Thomas. They just fit so well together and I wanted it to work out, I approached the new epilogue with caution in hopes that I’d get what I wanted, but I didn’t. In the end, I think it’s what Aaron needed and it made sense, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I’m glad that Aaron was able to not only come to terms with his sexuality, but meet someone, and begin the healing process of repairing the relationships with his friends that he knew would be painful but that he needed to not only survive but thrive in the future.
Recommendation: This was a brutally beautiful novel. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, but Silvera has a great sense of place and character. All of the characters leaped off the page and it felt like I spent most of the novel in a project in NYC. He also wrote characters coming of age so well and so vibrantly that the reader truly experiences every emotion with them and not as if watching them through a window or on TV. This novel has convinced me I need to look at the rest of his work sooner rather than later.
Opening Line: “It turns out the Leteo procedure isn’t bullshit.”
Closing Line: “I’m more happy than not. Don’t forget me./I’m more happy than not. Remember that.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)
Additional Quotes from More Happy Than Not
“I can’t believe I was once that guy who carved a smile into his wrist because he couldn’t find happiness, that guy who thought he would find it in death.” (8)
“I trace the smiling scar, left to right and right to left, happy to have it as a reminder not to be such a dumbass again.” (8)
“We all make mistakes. Every wrong job I take is a mistake, but it’s also a step in the right direction. If nothing else, it’s a step away from the wrong one.” (82)
“I’m staring very hard at my hands now. ‘I feel weird talking like this. Do guys do this kind of thing? Hang out and talk about love?’
‘You ask that like you haven’t been a guy your entire life. Some dudes make their mind a prison. I like living outside of bars. If we’re different, that’s fine with me.'” (132)
“From the shapes cast by the green paper lantern, you would never know that there were two boys sitting closely to one another trying to find themselves. You would only see shadows hugging, indiscriminate.” (136)
“. . . he’s mastered the art of lying so well he made me believe he doesn’t lie, when actually, the best liars are the ones who fool you by claiming they never lie at all.” (152)
“I stumbled on a story of a fifty-year-old father in Russia, A-1799R, who realized he spent half his life being someone he isn’t, and a quarter of that time married to a woman he doesn’t love—can’t love. But he couldn’t uproot his family, couldn’t abandon them or abandon Russia for a more accepting country, so he flew out here and asked Leteo if they could make him straight. And Leteo played with his head and did it. I followed that article to another about a nineteen-year-old teenager, P-6710S, who wanted to escape bullying and this feeling of wrongness. After her parents tried everything in their power to make her feel accepted, they turned to Leteo who ‘straightened her out.'” (156)
“I’m sure waiting for unfulfilled expectations will only make weeks feel like months, months feel like decades, and decades feel like my end of days. If there’s no happiness waiting for me there, then I lived a life without laughs and smiles and that’s not living at all. (168)
“Some people are obsessed with the works of Jane Austen or William Shakespeare or Stephen King, but I grew up with the demonic boy wizard, so whenever someone my age tells me they haven’t read these books, I imagine a Reaping spell being fired into the sky because a childhood is dead.” (179)
“The boy with no direction taught me something unforgettable: happiness comes again if you let it.” (255)
“Sometimes pain is so unmanageable that the idea of spending another day with it seems impossible. Other times pain acts as a compass to help you get through the messier tunnels of growing up. But the pain can only help you find happiness if you can remember it.” (270)