‘Are You Happy?’ Is a Darkly Claustrophic Journey Into Small-Town America

Lori Ostlund might be a San Francisco-based author now, but don’t expect her characters to always inhabit the Golden State.

In Ostlund’s new short story collection Are You Happy?, we instead meet characters from Minnesota and New Mexico, with only the occasional fleeting glance toward San Francisco or New York City. The reason becomes clear as her stories unfurl: Ostlund’s writing is most at home in small schools, small towns and small dive bars, all of them imbued with a permanent sense of enclosure, claustrophobia and unease. Major cities loom on the horizon only as escape hatches.

Other themes weave throughout these nine stories. Grief, for lives lost too soon, or for lives thrown away at the local bar. Being LGBTQ+, usually in places where it isn’t altogether safe. The constant threat of violence that permeates American culture and, in particular, women’s psyches.

Ostlund herself — a teacher of 25 years, and a lesbian — grew up in small-town Minnesota. Because she writes about what she most intimately knows, her stories are consistently immersive.

One of the most impactful stories in Are You Happy? is “The Stalker,” about a female teacher grappling with a sinister, potentially dangerous student. Ostlund juxtaposes the coziness of the teacher’s quiet home life, complete with wife and cat, with the cold, exposed feeling of fending for herself in night classes with a former soldier who may or may not want to hurt her.

While “The Stalker” is ultimately about the many ways women are forced to move through the world differently than men, elsewhere in the collection — in a story called “Clear as Cake” — a male teacher contends with a troublesome, frustrating group of students. Ostlund’s writings about school settings have a visceral edge clearly born from life experience rather than imagination. After reading her stories, you’ll wonder why she hasn’t quit teaching yet.

Are You Happy? is bookended with stories about women who’ve outgrown their unhappy upbringings, but are forced to temporarily return to and grapple with them. “The Bus Driver” and novella “Just Another Family” both leave readers with the sense that, no matter how far we go or how much we grow, it’s our formative years that matter.

In Lori Ostlund’s case, her real-life roots are wrapped around each and every one of her stories. Reading them can’t help but force you to face your own.

‘Are You Happy?’ by Lori Ostlund is out on May 6, 2025, via Astra House.

Ostlund appears Tuesday, May 6 at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco with Oscar Villalon, and Thursday, May 8 at Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley with Alec Scott.