'If Ferrante is a friend, Ginzburg is a mentor.'--Lara Feigel, Guardian'Her prose style is deceptively simple and very complex. Its effect on the reader is both calming and thrilling - that's not so easy to do.'--Deborah Levy'I'm utterly entranced by Ginzburg's style - her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay things bare that never feels contrived or cold, only necessary, honest, clear.'--Maggie Nelson'Her sentences have great precision and clarity, and I learn a lot when I read her.'--Zadie SmithThere is no one quite like Ginzburg for telling it like it is.'--Phillip Lopate'Filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation.'--Colm Tóibín'Her simplicity is an achievement, hard-won and remarkable, and the more welcome in a literary world where the cloak of omniscience is all too readily donned.' --William Weaver, The New York Times'Her sentences have great precision and clarity, and I learn a lot when I read her.' -- Zadie SmithThere is no one quite like Ginzburg for telling it like it is.' -- Phillip Lopate'Filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation.'--Colm Tóibín'Her simplicity is an achievement, hard-won and remarkable, and the more welcome in a literary world where the cloak of omniscience is all too readily donned.' --William Weaver, The New York Times'Dear Michele, she wrote, I'm writing principally to tell you that your father is sick. Go visit him. He says he hasn t seen you for days.'Michele is the beloved only son of a large, dysfunctional family in 1970s Italy. Headstrong and independent, he has disappeared to London without explanation. Back in Italy, his father lies dying. Michele's departure sets forth a series of events that will bring together everyone in his life - his mother Adriana, living in the countryside with her two twin daughters Bebetta and Nannetta, his long-suffering sister Angelica, his loyal and sad friend Osvaldo, and Mara, a young woman who is prone to showing up on doorsteps with a baby that may or may not be Michele's.The story of the Prodigal Son turned on its head, Happiness, As Such is a short, absurdly funny novel-in-letters about complicated families and missed connections.New translation by Minna Zallman Proctor'These books snare so much of what is odd and lovely and fleeting in the world. It is work that saved and sustained the writer after unimaginable loss. It buoys us up, too.' Parul Sehgal, The New York Times'Ginzburg gives us a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like.' Rachel Cusk'Ginzburg's beautiful words have such solidity and simplicity. I read her with joy and amazement.' Tessa Hadley