Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
What's It About?
An extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.Angie Kim’s Happiness Falls (Hogarth) expertly balances a page-turning plot, beautiful writing, and memorable characters to tell a story of love, family, and the importance of communication as the Parkson family tries to figure out what happened to their missing father.
Kim captures our attention immediately with her choice of Mia as our narrator. Mia is — by her own admission — more analytical than emotional and more prone to cynicism than idealism. A college student stuck at home due to the pandemic, Mia is forced back into the structure of living with family after experiencing the freedom that college affords. Naturally, she’s less than thrilled by this development and spends much of her time off on her own in stark contrast to her twin brother John who’s all smiles and the epitome of affability.
Alongside Mia and John in the pandemic-induced seclusion are their parents, Hannah Park and Adam Parson (hence the combined last name Parkson), and their younger non-verbal brother Eugene who lives with Angelman syndrome. It is into this setting and backdrop that we enter, an already tense state of affairs that is soon to become worse.
Mia is the only person home one morning when Eugene comes running up the driveway, bloody, screaming, and — most concerning — without their father in tow. The two had gone on a hike earlier that morning and for Eugene to return in such a state and alone is beyond alarming. Still, given the fact that Eugene is nonverbal, and in an increasingly distressed mood, what is Mia to do? How do you find a missing person when your only witness cannot speak? What ensues is a whirlwind of events that takes place over the course of a few days as Mia and her family work together to find their father, protect themselves from authorities, and unlock the information hidden in Eugene’s mind.
PAGE-TURNING PLOT, BEAUTIFUL WRITING
Angie Kim hooks the reader immediately with the opening line, “We didn’t call the police right away.” Beyond the gripping mystery, Kim’s portrayal of the family and the intimacy with which we are afforded by Mia further pulls the reader in. Each chapter is written as though Mia is writing directly to the reader; she knows when to go on a tangent to explain an inside family joke; she knows where to pause and provide context for that one topic that everyone in the family avoids talking about (every family has one); and she’s exceedingly self-aware of her own strengths, weakness, and how others perceive her.
Mia’s musings are further spurred on by her discovery of one of her father’s journals which details experiments on happiness and something he calls “the happiness quotient.” Through the notes, much about Adam’s disappearance is learned, but even more is revealed about the familial dynamics between the Parksons and we watch Mia not only come to terms with who she is, but also grow as a person.
Still, the true beauty in this novel is how Angie Kim handles Angelman syndrome and writes Eugene Parkson as a nonverbal character. There is a beauty and reverence to with which Kim shows the Parkson family interacting with Eugene while she deftly removes pity from her depiction. Eugene is a fully-fledged character with an integral role to play in the narrative, and no punches are pulled when it comes to his inclusion.
In the end, for you’ll get to the end quite quickly as this is one of those novels where it’s easy to say, “just one more chapter,” we’re given a deeply poignant and powerful novel that will leave you fulfilled, questioning, and clamoring for more Angie Kim. For your next read, I can only hope that you pick Happiness Falls and spend some time with Mia figuring out exactly what happened to Adam Parson.
About Angie Kim:
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, and the Today show.
One of Variety Magazine’s inaugural “10 Storytellers to Watch,” Angie has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Vogue, Glamour, and numerous literary journals. She lives in northern Virginia with her family. Happiness Falls is her second novel.
