Featured Reading Guide
Douglas Kennedy
Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945. The war was over, and Eric Smythe’s party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara – an independent, canny young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked a gatecrasher, Jack Malone – a US Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, and a man whose world-view did not tally with that of Eric and his friends. Set amidst the dynamic optimism of postwar New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy witch-hunts, The Pursuit of Happiness is a great tragic love story…
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Douglas Kennedy’s novels – The Dead Heart , The Big Picture , The Job , The Pursuit of Happiness , A Special Relationship and State of the Union – have all been highly praised bestsellers. He is also the author of three acclaimed travel books: Beyond the Pyramids , In God’s Country , and Chasing Mammon . His work has been translated into sixteen languages. In 2006 he received the French decoration of Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born in Manhattan in 1955, he lives in London with his wife and two children.
topAbout the Book
Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945. The war was over, and Eric Smythe’s party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara – an independent, canny young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked a gatecrasher, Jack Malone – a US Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, and a man whose world-view did not tally with that of Eric and his friends. Set amidst the dynamic optimism of postwar New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy witch-hunts, The Pursuit of Happiness is a great tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices, and the random workings of destiny.
topDouglas Kennedy interview/review
5 October 2000, The Guardian
Douglas Kennedy used to have a Post-it note above his desk on which he’d written: “It’s the story, stupid!” The piece of paper may have gone, but the maxim remains hugely important to this most readable of authors.
“I’m first and foremost a storyteller,” says the 46-year-old New Yorker, now resident in Wandsworth, just off the Common. “I used to look at that Post-it every day. I go for narrative drive – the book takes you here and drags you along. Every day, when I print up, before it all gets thrown in the box where it mounts up, I really do sit down and prune and take out anything not necessary. I look at the flow of the story.”
The Pursuit of Happiness will be seen by many as a departure for Kennedy… Interestingly, Kennedy himself doesn’t really see the new novel as a change of direction. “I’d thought for a long time about writing a love story. I had not read a very good love story in a long time and I thought what I could do was bring in some of the moral complexity you have in The Job and The Big Picture, and in Dead Heart, because that’s what I’m interested in. If you see one thing running through my books, it’s the choices people make. I thought I could bring that to a love story.”
The decision to have a female narrator just presented itself naturally. “It was obvious from the start that two women were going to tell this tale. It just came to me that way. I didn’t feel in any way that I had to do additional research. All you do as a novelist is that you get the character, you move with the character and stay true to the character.”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- The ‘pursuit of happiness’ is a part of the American Declaration of Independence, a guaranteed right of every American citizen. Is their pursuit of happiness the character’s ultimate downfall?
- The triumvirate of Sara, Eric and Jack is racked with confusions over love, loyalty and forgiveness. Do you think that its disintegration is inevitable? Who or what in the end is most responsible for its demise?
- Sara struggles to define herself as an independent woman in a conservative society, and in doing so suffers the stigma of being a divorcee, a mistress and, potentially, an unmarried mother. How much of Sara’s angst is generated by herself and how much by the constraints of the society she is forced to live in?
- Eric and Sara are united not only as brother and sister but also as woman and homosexual, both of which are marginalised by society. To what extent do these roles both limit and enrich their lives? How well do they handle the challenges that life throws at them?
- Douglas Kennedy has set his story against the backdrop of the actual McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s. How successfully do you think this has been done, and do you think the novel would have worked without this element of reality? Does the rest of the novel draw parallels with the political unrest of the day?
- The Pursuit of Happiness is at its heart a love story. How well do you think the novel fulfils the traditions of this genre?
Other Books by Douglas Kennedy
A Special Relationship
‘About an hour after I met Tony Hobbs, he saved my life. I know that sounds …
Leaving the World
On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring…
State Of The Union
America in the Sixties was an era of radical upheaval – of civil rights pro…
Suggested Further Reading
- On Green Dolphin Street ~ Sebastian Faulks
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin ~ Louis de Bernierès
- Chocolat ~ Joanne Harris
- The Blind Assassin ~ Margaret Atwood