Like Happiness

(Hardback)

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Description

The book leaps out at her in the bookstore: a diamond-studded Puerto Rico constellation gracing a black vellum cover, with an enigmatic name - M. Dominguez - in the lower right-hand corner. For Tatum Vega, out of place at a prestigious East Coast college, it is a lifeline. She writes her first piece of fan mail to the author. When he writes back, she finds herself drawn into an all-consuming and undefinable relationship with the older, charismatic Dominguez.

Over a decade later, Tatum has constructed a new life for herself, but when a reporter contacts her out the blue, this careful separation from her former existence crumbles. Dominguez has been accused of assault by another woman, and the reporter is looking for corroboration. Searching for clarity, Tatum decides to tell her story in a different way: in the form of a letter to Dominguez, recounting and reclaiming the totality of their decades-long relationship from the day they met to the shocking night it all imploded.

Reviews

'Like Happiness is a deft and touching coming of age story that resists easy answers to very thorny questions-about sexual consent and power, about fame and persona, about making and loving art.' - Rumaan Alam, bestselling author of Leave the World Behind

'An epic unraveling of every love story trope, reclaimed as something sharp, seething, unsettling, and true. Yes, this has page flipping plot momentum, but it's also a whip smart critique of race in America, art making in the age of neoliberal 'feminism,' and the crushing humor of trying to exist as a quiet person with big wants' - T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

'Like Happiness is a stunning swirl of a coming of age novel about power, manipulation, and complicity. In Tatum, Ursula Villarreal-Moura has created an eminently relatable character. Readers will connect to her love of books, her complicated relationships, and the different ways she grapples with understanding herself--in relation to class, sexuality, race, and family ties. This is the start of a brilliant career.' - Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly and Lakewood

'Expertly written with striking intimacy and heartbreaking clarity, Like Happiness accomplishes a profound emotional electrocution that will leave you floating lighter for days' - Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Olga Dies Dreaming

Author Bio

Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self-Crippling (2022), selected by Zinzi Clemmons as the Gold Line Press fiction contest winner. A graduate of Middlebury College, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was a VONA/Voices fellow. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast, Washington Square Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast. She contributed to Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, a flash anthology by writers of color, and in 2012, she won the CutBank Big Fish Flash Fiction/Prose Poetry Contest. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories 2015.