Daring, imaginative, ambitious, and insightful, So Much For Happy is a much needed wakeup call for the American people. McGill exposes the reality of race, education, and mass incarceration through the eyes of a child in an eloquent, yet chilling, debut.
When I started out my writing journey, one of the first people I met through the indie author community was writer E.P. McGill. At the time, his novel So Much For Happy was in its initial stages and I beta read for him. I received the draft in the evening and read through most of the night.
I was blown away.
So Much For Happy is the story of a young boy named Christopher Michael in a despotic society not so different from our own. The novel frames a society that consists of three main cities, Happy, Unhappy, and Hope. There are also only three races that exist in this world, and those are Red, White, and Blue. The Red people represent the lower class, the Blue the middle class, and the White the upper class.
Christopher Michael is a young boy who grows up in Unhappy. Like all the people in Unhappy, he is Red. Most of the people in Unhappy have given up on life and spend quite a bit of their money from their awful jobs buying "candy" and "soda", which they consume to try and forget about their awful jobs.
Sound familiar?
Continuing on...
Christopher Michael lives in constant fear of being sent to Kamp, a place where most of the Red people end up sooner or later. His brother was sent to Kamp years before, and Christopher Michael hasn't seen him since. He doesn't want to end up in Kamp, but his perspective on life has made him believe that Kamp is an inevitable future for him. The school doesn't teach the children properly, and although Christopher Michael teaches himself as much as he can, he knows it isn't enough. Because the schools don't teach the children properly, most of them have to resort to crime in order to survive, and when they commit crimes, they are sent to Kamp. Once they are in Kamp, they can be released, but they can never truly escape Kamp.
McGill frames the prison industrial complex in terms simple enough for a child to understand with a fresh, raw voice that will touch the hearts of adults.
This isn't a story about politics. It is the story of a little boy who misses his big brother.
Christopher Michael loves to read, but his school doesn't have access to many books or supplies. Some of his teachers even go as far as to discourage him from reading as it makes their jobs easier if he flunks. However, there is one teacher who thinks differently.
This teacher is Blue, like all the teachers at Christopher Michael's school, except there is something different about him. His color seems slightly purple, and the teacher explains that he used to be Red, but he got to transfer to Blue and live in Hope withe the rest of the middle class people. Although he is now Blue and lives in Hope, the people there always look at him differently because of where he came from. By sharing his story with Christopher Michael, the teacher gives the boy a small piece of the Hope he has. Christopher Michael realizes that he has a chance to get to Happy despite the immense institutionalized roadblocks in his path.
Christopher Michael begins his journey towards Happy. While he is trying to work out how to get there, the people in Happy run an experiment on the children in Unhappy. They show them the true colors of their skin. The children automatically form groups of people like themselves. Children who had once been friends now do not speak. Everyone insists on staying with 'their own kind', everyone, that is, except Christopher Michael.
Through a tenuous friendship with a White boy from Happy, Christopher Michael begins to see the truth about the divisions in his society. He has two choices, to make the easy choice and accept them for what they are and fall into the "candy" and "soda" life, or to be brave and to run to Happy. Christopher Michael runs, and he never stops.
So Much for Happy is incapable of disappointing. This is an incredible book by a fantastic new author. It is something everyone should read at least once. It deserves to be seen.
Please, check out the So Much for Happy webpage here, share, and help support Christopher Michael's journey to Happy.
A wonderful teaching guide also exists if you wish to bring So Much for Happy into your classroom, which can be found here.
Thank you all,
-Esha
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