Hector and the Search for Happiness

July 5, 2010
This trite debut follows a psychiatrist named Hector as he attempts to understand "what made people happy." At a crossroads professionally and personally, Hector resolves to take a trip, first landing in China, where he reconnects with an old friend and encounters Ying Li, with whom he spends a night. He also meets an old monk who offers a bit of happiness-related wisdom. Having suffered disappointment in his relations with Ying Li, Hector next heads to Africa, where he makes the acquaintance of a drug lord with a depressed wife, is kidnapped, and learns that "it's harder to be happy in a country run by bad people." Next up is the "big country where there were more psychiatrists than anywhere else in the world" and a meeting with a professor of "Happiness Studies." Lelord, a psychiatrist, writes in the simple prose you'd find in a children's book, and this stylistic choice quickly becomes irredeemably grating. Though the book is an international bestseller, it is far less a novel than a maudlin self-help guide that substitutes pat aphorisms for development.

September 15, 2010

In this first novel, which achieved best-seller status overseas, a psychiatrist named Hector takes a trip around the world to find out what makes people happy and to define what happiness is. From China to Africa, he talks to many people, and every time he learns something instructive about happiness, he writes it down in a notebook. Then he verifies his list with a Professor of Happiness and discovers that he has indeed figured it out--mostly. Lelord, a French-born psychiatrist and author of several self-help books, has written this story as if speaking to a child--he's presenting a simplified version of Hector's (and his) adventure. The book, part of a series, reads something like Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon, but the overall effect is charming, clever, humorous, and insightful. VERDICT Adults and teens will both enjoy this rulebook for happiness; recommended.--Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Lib.

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