Recommendations
Books Like Happy Days
Best books to read after Happy Days by Samuel Beckett
Readers who love Happy Days by Samuel Beckett are drawn to its combination of the terrifying image of Winnie buried in her mound and the extraordinary resilience of her determination to find a happy day despite everything — they want plays and novels that deal with the habit of happiness, the performance of normality in the face of impossible circumstances, and the tradition of the Beckettian investigation of characters who cannot escape their situation.
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Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
The companion organized around two figures who are waiting. Didi and Gogo cannot escape their situation and pass the time with talk; Winnie cannot escape her mound and passes the time with talk: both are Beckett's investigations of what human beings do when they are stuck
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Endgame
by Samuel Beckett
The companion organized around characters who are stuck at the end of the world. Hamm and Clov and the couple in the ashcans: the companion Beckett play as an investigation of characters who cannot escape their situation and who fill the time with habits that are both necessary and meaningless
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Krapp's Last Tape
by Samuel Beckett
The companion organized around a single figure's relationship to his past. The old Krapp listening to the young Krapp on tape: the companion investigation of the relationship between the habit of existence and the person who maintains it
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Not I
by Samuel Beckett
The companion organized around a single voice — a lit mouth speaking at enormous speed. The companion Beckett late play as an investigation of the compulsive nature of speech: the mouth that cannot stop speaking, the woman who cannot say 'I' about herself
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Rockaby
by Samuel Beckett
The late companion organized around a woman in a rocking chair listening to her own voice speaking the story of an old woman looking for another like herself. The companion to Happy Days as a late Beckett investigation of a woman alone, finding her own ways to endure
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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Bauby's companion memoir about writing a book by blinking — trapped in his body after a massive stroke. The companion to Happy Days as an investigation of the extraordinary productivity of a consciousness confined to immobility: Winnie talks; Bauby blinks out a book
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Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
Woolf's companion investigation of a woman's determination to find value and beauty in the life she has. The companion to Happy Days as an investigation of the female performance of happiness and competence in the face of the 'terror' and the 'ecstasy' that Clarissa Dalloway finds beneath her social surface
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The Woman Upstairs
by Claire Messud
Messud's companion about a woman who has organized her life around making other people comfortable and who finds, in middle age, that this has not made her happy. The companion to Happy Days as an investigation of the female performance of cheerful competence: Nora Eldridge's rage is what Winnie's happiness conceals
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