The Happiest People in the World by Brock Clarke

Published by Algonquin Books on November 4, 2014

After the controversy surrounding the Jyllands-Posten publication of twelve cartoons depicting Mohammed rattles Denmark, Jens Baedrup, the editorial cartoonist for a small Danish newspaper, is ordered to draw a similar cartoon. After a couple of teens burn down his house, the Danish authorities announce that Jens died in the fire and place him into witness protection. Whether Jens' wife will miss him seems doubtful. Lorraine Callahan, a CIA agent who is guarding Jens, decides to send him to Broomeville, New York to work with Matty Klock, the school principal with whom she once had an affair. Matty fires a drunken guidance counselor and gives the job to Jens, who is now known as Henry.

We are told repeatedly that Danes are the happiest people in the world. Americans clearly are not. Lorraine wants to be sleeping with Matty, who still pines for Lorraine although he sort of wants to be faithful to his unforgiving wife Ellen, who wants to sleep with Jens. Also unhappy is a guy named Capo who is monitoring all of these shenanigans for reasons that are not immediately revealed to the reader.

Another plot thread concerns Soren, one of the teens who holds himself responsible for (what he believes to be) Jens' death. Despite his experimentation with arson, Soren is a likable character who enters into an unlikely alliance with another of the novel's central characters.

Brock Clarke gets comic mileage from a Denmark that he portrays as populated by people who feel guilty about the religious stereotypes to which they subscribe while making no effort to overcome them. He also has fun with the unspoken thoughts that race through his characters' brains. As is common with unspoken thoughts, they tend to be ridiculous and are wisely left unspoken. But they are also very funny.

You might need Venn diagrams to keep track of all the characters and their relationships to each other. None are developed in great depth but they are deep enough to carry a comedy. This is a dark comedy but the story is heartening in many ways, including its depiction of father's admiration of his son. That he admires his son's ability to buy an illicit gun in Copenhagen merely adds to the story's amusement.

For a novel that is marketed as having great political depth, The Happiest People is surprisingly light, yet I did not regard that as a fault by the time I finished reading it. Perhaps it has hidden depths, but I enjoyed it as a fairly superficial look at the ways in which life (and people) can become utterly strange.

RECOMMENDED