Zoe Dubno on ‘Happiness and Love,’ Her Wickedly Funny Debut Novel Skewering New York’s Creative Class

At the beginning of Zoe Dubno ’s debut novel, Happiness and Love, we find ourselves at a Downtown Manhattan dinner party. Anticipation hangs in the air as a group of young creative types waits for a buzzy young actress to arrive. The narrator, we learn, has ended up here surrounded by a group of old friends she’s purposefully avoided since moving out of the city five years ago; after returning for the funeral of a friend within this same circle, she finds all her old gripes and resentments with them surfacing again, watching them perform their acts of faux modesty and subtle games of oneupmanship against each other. The narrator sits on a sofa in the corner of the room, sipping white wine, and we hear every scathing thought that passes through her head—and continue to do so for the fol