I Want You to Be Happy: A Novel by Jem Calder (Preorder)

Release date: July 14th, 2026

NAMED 'A BEST DEBUT NOVELIST' BY THE OBSERVER • NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED NOVEL BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • THE TIMES • GQ • THE GUARDIAN • THE SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

“I Want You to Be Happy is an irresistible novel that asks complex questions about contemporary life and refuses easy answers. I couldn’t stop reading.” —Sally Rooney

“Jem Calder’s I Want You To Be Happy brought me so close to its characters that their world became more real to me than my own. This is a gripping, wise, sad, funny book. It pays such close attention to the textures of life as it's actually lived—in all its in-between moments and unspoken feelings and ambivalence, its blackouts and needy texts and ambushes of tenderness. Jem Calder feels like a particular kind of wizard, sculpting precisely-realized moments of aliveness that feel, at once, startlingly lucid and radiant with mystery. I was utterly enthralled.” —Leslie Jamison

Chuck and Joey meet in a bar. He's in his mid-thirties; she's twelve years younger. He's long abandoned his ambition of becoming a novelist and now works as a copywriter at a big ad agency. 'Lead copywriter,' he corrects himself. Joey lives paycheck to paycheck on her barista wages and privately dreams of making it as a poet. They go back to Chuck's luxury flat—a world away from Joey's cramped house-share, the crumbs in her bed. Soon, Joey's imagining a future between them, and Chuck's moving on from a major change in his recent past. Amazing, how meeting a new person can make you feel so new.

Funny, excruciating, and true, I Want You to Be Happy is a sharp-eyed tale of two people searching for meaning and connection in modern times, missing the mark maybe, but trying.