It can be consumed at a voracious pace, and one could certainly enjoy it by the pool of a five-star hotel one has not paid a single cent to stay in. Happy Hour is a pleasurable book about repeated, small-scale scamming of the rich. Under Happy Hour’s glittering surface runs a witty tone of necessary critique, a fun hint of mockery, and the vital celebration of everyday joy Read Full Review > There is a hint of darkness that lingers in the corners, a soft whisper that this kind of pleasure is not sustainable, so one should find every opportunity and enjoy it while it lasts. But there is so much more here than empty exploits and lavish decadence. no one would be faulted for reading this wonderful debut as frothy entertainment. It might be easy to dislike if we weren’t so charmed by their approach.

But it’s also a witty critique of our pervasive cult of ambition. On the surface, Happy Hour is a deliciously fun fever dream conjured in one of the world’s greatest cities. A run-in with a group of writers, editors, and critics is one particularly hilarious diversion, serving more as a scathing takedown of dominant literary culture than a simple random night at a dingy bar. With so many conversations and so many characters flitting in and out, it can be hard to discern who or what actually matters-which of course is the point. Instead we are simply allowed to revel in the wonderfully directionless ride of Isa and Gala’s good and occasionally bad times, soaking up the book’s carefree tone with each invitation accepted and cocktail consumed. This kind of set-up could easily devolve into a ham-fisted cautionary tale Happy Hour thankfully refuses lazy cliché. like Babitz, Granados understands that the power of an effective writer lies in her capacity to 'change the boundaries of heaven.' And like any seasoned party girl, Isa knows that half the pleasure of the party is in the retelling.

Bracingly bridling at our expectations, it revels in an erotics of excess, while never losing its shrewd observational eye. And in unknotting and taxonomizing the navigational rules of this labyrinthine apparatus.the author makes the classic novel of manners our cocaine contemporary, revising its narratives to insinuate that, in matters of social (if not economic and structural) power, there is, in large part, no there there.

With finger-licking delight, she reveals the hollowness at the center of the matryoshka doll that is the city’s social networking apparatus. Through her portrait of Isa and Gala and the crowd that swirls around them, Granados broadly satirizes the cultural class of model-artists, fuckboy bartenders, hip gallerists, and secretly wealthy layabouts of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

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