The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

Catherine Lacey Reads "Rate Your Happiness"

52 min

Catherine Lacey's story "Rate Your Happiness" follows Louise, a woman grappling with an unsatisfying relationship and a complicated past, who faints on a plane, leading to an unexpected encounter with Bruce, a nurse who knows her estranged father. As she navigates her friends' family life in San Francisco and the city's overwhelming modernity, Louise confronts her own unhappiness, her father's legacy, and the impending end of her current relationship, ultimately finding a strange clarity amidst personal and societal chaos.

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✨ Key Takeaways

1

Unexpected Connection: Louise's mid-flight fainting spell leads to an encounter with Bruce, a nurse who coincidentally knows her estranged father, Harry, creating an immediate, complex bond.
2

Critique of Modernity: The story subtly critiques San Francisco's tech-driven culture, from driverless cars and omnipresent phones to the 'rate your happiness' influencer, reflecting Louise's internal disdain.
3

Complex Family Dynamics: Louise grapples with her difficult relationship with her father, Harry, whose voice note reveals his self-pity, and later learns of his stroke and struggles in Alaska.
4

Evolving Relationships: Her 'weird' relationship with Diana is on the brink, while her accidental connection with Bruce deepens through shared experiences and an unspoken understanding.
5

Search for Clarity: Despite feeling 'defeated by the present' and surrounded by chaos, Louise ends the story with 'total clarity' about her contradictory desires, symbolized by a pilfered eye serum.

💬 Notable Quotes

"“So much shines in absence, whereas presence, high and lonesome, can tire.”"
"“You’re unhappy about your childhood, and I can’t help you with that. You had a perfectly happy childhood and now you remember it being awful because the culture, the culture wants you to be unhappy about your childhood.” — Harry (Louise's father)"
"“How natural it is to fail, to fail to decide, to remain in meaningless motion, like all those ants with their cockroach corpse, or like all of us, how active and yet inert life felt in this entirely two-modern world.”"