`Happy" is not a state of being but a place the Happy Lounge a group of young New Yorkers congregate near the start of this novel to ponder the suicide of one of their friends. Young Irish actress Janie Jay was one of the "young, cashed-up . . . phone-based, cafe-barbased" twentysomethings who hang out together, but are really strangers, both to each other and to anything approaching real happiness.
Aimee, Sammy, Fat Boots are not only alienated, but alienating; and this is a problem for Judy May Murphy's jagged tale. The story of the mysterious, lonely, bulimic Irish girl (which starts on a beach in the west of Ireland) and the impact of her life and death on her group of acquaintances unfolds in a series of initially confusing flashbacks and fast-forwards. And it is hard to care enough about the characters to stay with them as the story unfolds.
But Murphy's language is violently good at capturing the bruised, hurtful reality behind the characters' empty lives - and her descriptions of Janie's bulimic, self-harming behaviour seem vividly, painfully accurate. The urban hell Janie's friends live in is like "Friends - the Dark Side". It might give some insight into the cafe bar lives of our own young tigers.
Frances O'Rourke is an Irish Times journalist
