Happiness by Aminatta Forna review: Happiness is full of elegantly - written passages that you will want to revisit

Aminatta Forna is the maestro of the slow-build. In The Hired Man (2013) and The Memory of Love (2011), she subtly weaved seemingly disparate threads into powerful crescendos. With Happiness, she pulls it off again.

The backbone of the book is Forna’s take on the boy-meets-girl story. Jean, an American who has been living near the Old Kent Road for a year, literally runs into Attila on Waterloo Bridge, and falls over.

Attila is a middle-aged, widowed psychiatrist from Ghana, in London for a conference. Jean has left her husband and son in Massachusetts for an ascetic life devoted to wildlife conservation. But she hasn’t realised how lonely she is, subsisting on meagre dinners for one and convincing herself that she prefers solitude.

Through Jean and Attila, Forna explores why humans act as they do in the face of adversity. She was influenced by a book called Resilience by French psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik about how childhood trauma can result in strength.

Forna’s father was executed for treason in Sierra Leone when she was 10 and she has clearly given careful thought to the effects of violence, building Cyrulnik’s theories into the character of Attila. He works as a trauma specialist and hostage negotiator in war zones — there are flashbacks to Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Iraq — and questions the long-held assumption that suffering is inherently damaging.

In London, he takes on the case of a refugee woman accused of arson who has been ostracised by her community. This allows Forna to extrapolate on how people who haven’t experienced adverse events can react to those who have.

Attila and Jean are likeable characters — there is humour in Attila’s huge appetite and the way he deals with the more understated Jean. We get to know them through flashbacks focused on what makes relationships fail.

Both have felt unable to balance fulfilling careers and meaningful relationships. Jean spent many years with Ray, a needy used car salesman who didn’t want to come second to her work protecting foxes. Sensing that their son has always sided with Ray, she is painfully unable to articulate her love for him. Meanwhile, Jean’s work protecting urban foxes allows Forna’s skill as an evocative nature writer to shine.

Attila also feels hamstrung — guilty at leaving his wife for long periods in war zones, but at the same time compelled to go to the aid of vulnerable people there.

It is testament to Forna that none of this feels heavy. She has a deft touch and a warm style. There’s a funny and topical Twitter spat when Jean challenges the Mayor of London’s policy on fox culls live on radio.

Subplots bring dramatic tension. Attila is hunting for his missing niece and her son and in doing so meets a cast of migrants, like him, who have settled in London. Then there’s the story of Attila’s first love, Rosie, who has dementia and is being failed by her care home.

Happiness is full of elegantly - written passages that you will want to revisit to make sense of changing circumstances in an increasingly tumultuous world.

Happiness by Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury, £16.99), buy it now