Book Review: Happy – Why more or less everything is absolutely fine.

Author: Derren Brown

Publisher: Corgi 2017

(Transworld – part of Penguin Random House group)

Genre: Non-fiction

Pages: 528

(Not including books cited, list of illustrations, or Index)

Date Read: January – March ‘26

Blurb:

Everyone says they want to be happy. But that’s much more easily said than done. What does being happy actually mean? And how do you even know when you feel it?

Across the millennia, philosophers have thought long and hard about happiness. They have defined it in many different ways and come up with myriad strategies for living the good life. Drawing on this vast body of work, in Happy Derren Brown explores changing concepts of happiness – from the surprisingly modern wisdom of the Stoics and Epicureans in classical times right up until today, when the self-help industry has attempted to claim happiness as its own. He shows how many of self-help’s suggested routes to happiness and success – such as positive thinking, self-belief and setting goals – can be disastrous to follow and, indeed, actually cause anxiety.

This brilliant, candid and deeply entertaining book exposes the flaws in these ways of thinking, and in return poses challenging but stimulating questions about how we might allow ourselves to flourish and to live more happily.

My review:

I picked this book up from my local second-hand bookstore. I have long admired Derren Brown for his charismatic showmanship and the way that he seems to hypnotise and captivate an audience into believing all sorts of abstract ideas before often revealing exactly how he manages to achieve the mind tricks. I find people like this fascinating and wonder at the similarities to many other world-famous historical figures who seem to have performed ‘miraculous’ acts. Despite this, I’ll admit that this book had been sat on my bookshelf for a while before I picked it out to read. It is a fairly chunky book, and I knew that I would have to be in the right frame of mind to read it as some of the wording in it is fairly academic. You do need to have your wits about you and be able to sit down and give it your full attention in order to take in all that it is saying. I chose to read this book at the start of a new year as, well let’s be honest, I thought that reading a book called ‘Happy’ might be a good omen for the year ahead. Who doesn’t want to learn the secret to being more ‘happy’?

The book is split up into three sections which are then broken down further into chapters each containing a number of segments. This thankfully makes the book very easy to dip in and out of especially when attempting to wrap your head around all of the philosophical ideas. Part 1 is essentially the book opener. It lays out the problems that people come up against when trawling through modern self-help books such as how positive thinking doesn’t always solve everything (it can even leave you feeling guilty for not thinking positively enough) and how goal setting without being fully aware or informed of possible pitfalls can prove disastrous. At the end of this section we are then introduced to ‘The Diagonal’ from Schopenhauer’s interplay of aims and fortune. This is referred to a few times in the book. It reminds us that we do not have complete control over everything that happens in our lives and encourages us to stay grounded in the present and focus on those things that we can control. A simple enough logic that most mindful paths would encourage.

Part 2 in the book is largely focussed on philosophical ideas about happiness that can be found throughout history. This section was really interesting although I also found it to be very tedious and academic at times. You get a real sense of how much Derren admires the stoic principles and ideas and these are explored in depth. At times I couldn’t help but think that the book was just playing off of ideas that the stoics had already come up with and that maybe I should just continue reading an actual book on the stoics. As such, I didn’t make any notes about this section other than to maybe consider reading other literature on the stoics in future.

The last section of the book was largely concentrated on ideas around death. Perhaps surprisingly for a book titled ‘happy’ reading about the ponderings of people who were terminally ill, was actually my favourite and for me personally the most thought provoking part of the book. Having established in the first two sections that we should try to focus on the here and now as much as possible, part three teaches us that rather than attempting to complete as much as possible in our lives, we should aim to just live ‘well enough’.  In other words, stop putting quite so much pressure on ourselves to constantly achieve. Having been someone who has suffered with anxiety to varying degrees at various points throughout my life, I found the section on anxiety on page 526 to be particularly helpful. I especially liked the quote, “To live without anxiety is to live without growth.” We shouldn’t put ourselves down for feeling anxious sometimes. Other memorable points were Derren’s musings on the things that people truly value and the idea that actually the most important thing to all of us is the knowledge that others will continue to live on after us. Why is that important? Not only is it the idea that we will still be remembered for a while after we have gone, but also that others will continue to use and build on those ideas and tools that we lived with. The book ends by reminding us that we cannot and should not seek to be happy all of the time. It is a good idea to sit with ourselves and understand what is troubling us whilst also being mindful of what is and isn’t in our control.

In summary, I wouldn’t say that the book is necessarily groundbreaking. Indeed, there are times when it comes across as being unnecessarily convoluted, but the philosophical questions that it explores are interesting and intriguing and it is a good reminder to sit and evaluate what we really want from the short time that we have here on this planet. Ultimately it is up to us how we react to things and how we view ourselves and our place in the world.

Star rating: 4 out of 5.