I Want You to Be Happy is the excruciating millennial novel everyone will be reading this summer
The Independent | Latest news and features from US, UK and worl…
May 24, 2026
Abandon your Monzo pots, ye who enter here! Jem Calder’s debut novel, about a millennial copywriter and a wannabe Gen Z poet, captures modern life at its most expensive, overwhelming and bleak – but the book is ultimately hopeful, he tells Jessie Thompson
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