Paperback of the week: I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder

Chuck and Joey meet at a bar. He’s 35, she’s 23. He overshares (uncharacteristically, we’ll learn) about his ex-fiancee. They go back to his enviable flat – “Literally how can you afford this place?” – and fail to have sex. The next time goes better, and the novel follows the pair for another eight months or so, each chapter switching perspective from one character to the other.

Jem Calder, whose story collection Reward System was published in 2022, is one of this year’s crop of the Observer’s best debut novelists. He has an impressively microtonal grasp of romantic or para-romantic human interaction, he’s funny, and he can recreate on the page the seamless interpenetration of on- and offline life. All of which puts him somewhere between Sally Rooney (who, as editor of the Stinging Fly, was the first person to publish Calder’s work), Vincenzo Latronico and Tony Tulathimutte as a chronicler of the millennial moment. 

Chuck is a copywriter – or rather “lead copywriter”, his insistent distinction being the first of several red flags – at a creative agency. Joey is a barista. Both want to write – he fiction, she poetry. They go on dates, they work, they dog-sit for Chuck’s brother. They talk a lot, in person and via their phones, although not particularly fluently or at great length. Calder likes dialogue and is very good at it, both the verbal element and the surrounding maintenance work: how things are said and what people do with their bodies when they speak.

His eye for detail is acute. He coyly avoids mentioning specific London neighbourhoods (Rutland Road, near Victoria Park, is the only Googleable address in the book), but Nalgene bottles, V60 pour-over coffee, blue razz ice vapes and more contribute to the web of specificity in which his characters are held. His verisimilitude only slips twice: an HR manager threatening Chuck with redundancy for misconduct (she’d know that’s not how it works); and a poetry collection having a review quote printed on the cover when it’s still in hardback. That these things stood out to me quite so much might speak to my pedantry, but it’s also a testament to how immersive and deftly realised is the world Calder creates.

It’s an emotionally convincing one, too. In many ways, Chuck is objectively not a good person. He sniffs Joey’s used underwear and checks her messages behind her back. He’s aggressive and withholding. He lies without remorse. But Calder locates the humanity in his character without having him suddenly become less awful.

Chuck and Joey share a good deal with an unnamed couple from a Reward System story called Distraction from Sadness is Not the Same Thing as Happiness – a title that might also work for the novel. That pair, “female user” and “male user”, meet on an app. Like Chuck, the man is emerging from a relationship, has some ability to charm and occasionally exhibits sociopathic behaviours. She, like Joey, has problems with self-worth and frets about the time between a message sent and its reply. He entertains a fantasy of being more monastic: “He could read more: be the guy who reads.” Chuck thinks he “could have better habits. Like, for instance, he could get into meal prep.” And both women make similar attempts to define their situationships. In Distraction from Sadness, Calder writes, if “you counted her mouth, he had come inside her upwards of 15 times”. When Chuck bridles at Joey’s attempt to define what they are to each other, she says, “OK. Cool. You realise you’ve nutted in me about 30 times.”

Rereading the story after the novel, it’s precisely these similarities that clarify how much the longer form plays to Calder’s strengths, deepening his characters and allowing his emotional and sociological acuity to go further. He was good to begin with, and he’s only getting better.

I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder is published by Faber (£14). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £12.74 (15% off RRP). Delivery charges may apply

Photography by Parisa Taghizadeh/Millennium Images