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    The Happiness Machine
    Unavailable
    The Happiness Machine
    Unavailable
    The Happiness Machine
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Happiness Machine

    Written by Katie Williams

    Narrated by Rebecca Lowman, Kirby Heyborne, Alex McKenna and

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    ‘Philosophical, funny, cleverly structured, unpredictable’ Gabrielle Zevin

    If a machine could offer a prescription for happiness but you might not like the results would you take the test?

    Eat more tangerines. Divorce your wife. Cut off your right index finger. The Apricity machine’s recommendations are often surprising, but they’re 99.97% guaranteed to make you happier. Pearl works for Apricity – meaning happiness is her job – but her teenage son Rhett seems more content to be unhappy, and refuses to submit to the test. Is Pearl failing as a mother and in her job – and does she even believe in happiness any more?

    Warm, witty and utterly charming, The Happiness Machine is where A Visit from the Goon Squad meets Where’d You Go Bernadette.

    First published as Tell the Machine Goodnight.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJul 12, 2018
    ISBN9780008265076
    Unavailable
    The Happiness Machine

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    Reviews for The Happiness Machine

    3.5/5

    75 ratings5 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Oddly entertaining story about what happiness looks like for this cast of characters.
    • 2/5
      What a disappointment considering the great premise. The machine in the title refers to a tiny device (which reminded me of the Theranos gizmo), the Apricity, that offers recommendations towards happiness based on a cheek swab it processes. The very first chapter shows one of the uses of the devices: employers subjecting their employees to it (to improve productivity), except that one of the recommendations a man gets is to amputate a chunk of his finger (HR already agreed to pay for it!). There was so much that could have been done with such a premise. Some of it is mentioned or hinted at but never really explored. When the recommendations could involve doing harm, they are removed. Could the recommendations be used in a court of law? Can people be coerced to undergo the procedure?
      Sadly, very quickly, the narrative shifts from those potentialities to the much less interesting inner cogitations of not very interesting characters.
      This was a quick and very unsatisfying read.
    • 3/5
      Pearl works for Apricity, a company that makes a machine that can take a sample of a person's DNA, and tell them three things they can do to find happiness. Usually these things are small, like eat oranges, go for walks, get a puppy. The book explores Pearl, her son who has an extreme eating disorder, her ex-husband who is an artist, his young new girlfriend with a troubled past, and her boss who wants to move up in the company. All of these people use or abuse Apricity machines in different ways.The characters are all interesting - it's hard for a book this short to explore so many people in depth and make them feel real and give them room to grow and develop. Unfortunately, all of this time exploring characters doesn't really leave much room for a plot. The book kind of feels like a collection of loosely-connected short stories. It is ostensibly exploring what "happiness" means and whether you can really achieve happiness based on the recommendations of a machine, but it never really delivers. The book seems promising, but I ultimately found it to be unsatisfying.
    • 4/5
      As an audiobook, this was pretty good and it was good to listen to before going to sleep. But, it was hard to tell if this was a series of short stories that were all related or just a loosely constructed novel. I know thatdoesn't sound much like an endorsement but there you have it...

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Hard work. The story starts out ok, then branches out and loses focus. Uses that device where you have to work to figure out who is narrating various chapters - hasn't that been done to death? Story about Val seems a completely unnecessary diversion. Deeply unsatisfying read.

      1 person found this helpful