Review of Jem Calder's 'I Want You to Be Happy'

TL;DR

The novel opens with a droll description of a man and woman meeting in a bar, with specifics like names and location redacted.
Calder's prose is described as factual and affectless, similar to Sally Rooney, with attention to surfaces like Nicholson Baker or Bret Easton Ellis.
The story is set against a backdrop of contemporary technology and habits, including rental ebikes, vapes, meal-replacement shakes, Slack channels, and push notifications.
Characters cyberstalk each other and agonize over text response times, with even their age difference noted in their texting styles.
Both protagonists are aspiring artists: Joey a poet and Chuck a novelist.
Calder's style includes noun-to-verb transformations and Joycean portmanteaus.
The novel features vivid descriptions of rain.
Despite its modern setting, the novel is seen as a warm, old-fashioned story with protagonists who have inner lives and important feelings.
The turn-and-turn-about third-person narration highlights the disjunctions between how characters see each other and themselves.

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