I LOVED this book. I found it SO WELL WRITTEN, so witty and funny and reading it I was often envious of Ruth Whippman’s facility with language. It is a hugely engaging read, accessible and so relevant ... I really, really, really, really enjoyed it and am quite evangelical about it.

Like Bill Bryson, Whippman has a willingness to play up cultural differences to comic effect … She also has Bryson’s sharp ear for language ... With warm wit and chilling logic, The Pursuit of Happiness shows that the human desire for contentment can be manipulated and distorted until it is barely recognisable ... A whip-smart British Bill Bryson.

[Ruth Whippman] writes with sharpness and wit

Ruth Whippman is my new favorite cultural critic, and her book was such a joy to read that I temporarily forgot about all my neuroses. It’s a shrewd, hilarious analysis of why a country obsessed with happiness is so darn unhappy.

A smart, insightful and at times hilarious critique of America's booking "Happiness industry" ... You might not end up happy but you'll be glad you read it.

Those wanting to understand the complex reality of our personal quest for happiness might usefully turn to Ruth Whippman’s The Pursuit of Happiness – the lively memoir of a British journalist in California, on the hunt for that elusive but, as she sees it, increasingly sought-after, American ideal of happiness … Whippman – whose narrative voice is an unlikely mix of Kathy Lette’s and Louis Theroux’s – has followed her husband to Silicon Valley to start a new life … Whippman argues persuasively that happiness is something that emerges from the quality of relationships we have with others … The Pursuit of Happiness also sheds light on the link between religion and happiness.

She writes with a light touch ... Her conclusions are amusing and offer a useful commentary on this age of materialism and gloating.

Wry and often hilarious … Whippman takes readers on an engaging and perceptive personal romp through the $10 billion happiness industry, and, along the way, shreds much of the 'science' that happiness is both an individual responsibility and a solo endeavour. A great - and important – read.

Ruth Whippman manages the trick of being funny about what is, deep down, a serious problem

If you're on a quest for happiness, you want to start with buying this book. Wit, wisdom, and the kind of analysis only a Brit could bring to the topics of anxiety and contentment ... I laughed my way through it.

With insight and intellect, Whippman brings a fresh perspective to American culture that is almost impossible to find in today’s positivity-at-all-costs ethos ... a vibrant, hilarious, necessary book.

Ruth Whippman cuts to the heart of America's obsession with happiness - and the strange and wonderful things we do to obtain it ... a funny, timely book that everyone should read

For anyone who has fallen prey to a book promising the secret of a happy life, and then failed to feel any happier, THIS book, by Whippman, might just provide the answers you didn't even know you were seeking.

So well-written and witty, you won’t notice that Whippman is delivering a devastating verdict on positive psychology as pseudoscience.

Ruth Whippman captures the absurdity of our late capitalist moment with sharp, insightful prose and a wicked sense of humor that makes every single page a pure joy to read. The Pursuit of Happiness not only entertains without fail, but it also offers a wealth of devastating insights into how our culture demands happiness of us in ways that only seem to make us miserable ... I don't think I've enjoyed cultural observations this much since David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Reading this book is like touring America with a scary-smart friend who can't stop elbowing you in the ribs and saying, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?!" If you want to understand why our culture incites pure dread and alienation in so many of us (often without always recognizing it), read this book.

A smart, searing and frightening look at modern love

Clever and original - as smart as it is scary

A daringly original novel about the best and worst of love

A terrifying thriller that distils modern marriage down to its confusing core

An undeniably creepy web of lies, deceit and consequences

He looked at the words on the screen as the news networks competed to find words to describe the events: massacre, carnage, bloodbath. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t because of Melvil… Initially resistant to spending time with fellow mourners, Antoine discovered that there is a kind of brotherhood, a feeling of recognition, that can provide consolation.

[A] beautifully written memoir… It’s the hardest book you can pick up this year, but also the most affecting.

It is a personal account of the aftershock following the atrocity. Yet there is no gore, no torture, no scene-setting, no facts putting the Isis-claimed retaliation in context, no second-hand reports of what happened inside the theatre… Instead, it is simple and immediate, and is all about love and loss… This book may also be Leiris’s way of just holding it together. One feels he is writing as the man he was before that November day that changed everything… It is the literary equivalent of smelling her clothes every night before attempting to sleep.

A book for our times.

This book is a love song to Hélène, a promise to Melvil and a resolution not to be defeated by chaos and barbarity. It is a stunning mission statement.

This heartbreaking and beautifully written memoir lays bare the terrible chronology of grief, but it is also a testimony to the power of love and hope.

It’s an agonising account of those first few days, in which the lives of father and son changed forever. Despite the haste with which it was written, every word is chosen with care and charged with meaning, a raw and honest memoir of grief which can’t fail to move all who read it.

If ever there was a lesson in living the fullest, most passionate life you can, this is it! I Found My Tribe is one of the most moving memoirs I have ever read. Living with her husband Simon, who was diagnosed with motor neuron disease and her five children, Ruth Fitzmaurice writes so honestly and vividly about her family's life that you will think about the Fitzmaurice's long after you have turned the final page. It is beautifully written with clever descriptions and vivid imagery that will take your breath away. Writing to the background noise of Simon's medical machines, twenty four hour carers and five children, Ruth candidly writes about her life as she navigates various different themes including grief, friendship and love and the strength she has in the face of adversity… I found my tribe is an uplifting powerful memoir that will make you laugh and cry in equal measures. I urge everyone to read it

Beautiful…There is huge passion in Fitzmaurice’s writing.

A surprisingly uplifting read