The Promise of Happiness

by Justin Cartwright and justin-cartwright

Book Overview

A powerful elegy to the intimacies and idiocies of family, The Promise of Happiness tells the story of an apparently ordinary family on the cusp of an extraordinary moment: the return of the family's prodigal daughter, Juliet. Her release from an upstate New York prison throws the Judds, formerly of London but now scattered, back together. For her father, Juliet's conviction for a theft she may not have committed had proven the disintegration of a...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312348800
• ISBN13: 9780312348809
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A pleasure to read.

As I got deeper into this novel, I enjoyed it more and more. Sure, it doesn't hurt that its beginning is a real downer, focusing on the depressed Charles Judd, while the novel has a happy ending. What really helped was that some things which bothered me began to make more and more sense: Juliet's actions when she was on trial, the impact on Charles, the desertion of Juliet's lover. I am still bothered that Sophie would react so strongly to Juliet's conviction: she had been off drugs for a year, and went back on them (p.177); the novel never established a relationship between Juliet and Sophie which would account for that. Cartwright's literary prose is a pleasure to read and all his characters come alive, and deepen as the novel progresses. The troubled married life of the senior Judd's is richly and economically drawn.

"We are all subject to its tyranny"

Juliet "Ju-Ju" Judd never really believed she would end up spending two years in a Federal Correctional Facility in upstate New York. She'd been working as a high profile art dealer when she was sentenced for conspiring to illegally sell a stolen Tiffany Window. Although she didn't actually take it, she took the blame because she divvied up the money and wrote the checks. Wracked with shame, she blamed it on her love affair with Ritchie, her partner in crime, who led her down the path of shady dealings and corrupt transactions. We first meet Juliet just as she's being released from prison and her dependable brother Charlie has arrived in the States to take her home to England. It has been two years of hell for this intelligent and quietly enigmatic girl, and her sudden incarceration has splintered and fractured her family. Mired in humiliation, Ju-Ju's parents, Daphne and Charles retire to a ramshackle cottage on the windswept coast of Cornwall, devastated at their daughter's plight. Always the apple of his eye, Charles can't bear the thought that everyone knows his precious daughter is in gaol. Ju-Ju's younger sister Sophie, battles drug addiction, whilst working as a film advertiser in London. And Charlie, the family success story, is making his fortune selling socks over the Internet. For two years, the Judd family has stumbled into darkness; Daphne - never actually believing that Ju-Ju was guilty - finds solace in prayer, cooking classes and flower arranging. She hopes for a resolution, a manifestation of family, where one day they can all get together in Cornwall. Charles, bitter at being forcibly retrenched from a prestigious law firm in London, endlessly studies the cliffs and ekes out his days on the local golf course. Obviously they've coped badly, even the dog-committed suicide, and then there where Daphne's ghastly and tense visits to the prison to see Ju-Ju in America. Author Justin Cartwright steadily unveils the family dynamics, with Ju-Ju's imprisonment affecting each of them in vastly different ways. Caught in an ethical dilemma, Charles refuses to go to America to see his daughter because he just couldn't bare to see Ju-Ju suffer; he feared the sight of her in a prison uniform would demolish the unsteady edifice that his life has become, he even admits, "I am being punished for my cowardice." Charles is the moral center of this novel, yet he is the one who loses his bearings and the one most affected by Ju-Ju's incarceration. Wracked with disenchantment and deeply cynical, he tries desperately to blame 9/11: "all the foreigners were suspect; the dragnet caught my Ju-Ju." And he's angry that his life hadn't turned out the way it should have and that all the hope he had invested in his daughter has come to nothing. He'd always imagined that he could shield their children from all that is harsh and lonely in the world. The Promise of Happiness is all about the search to regain contentment in a world that has become far

Family

Rather than provide another comprehesive review, which has already been accomplised by previous reviewers, I will simply add this; that Cartwright reminds us in The Promise of Happiness of the preordained roles family members are assigned for life. No matter how our lives change, there is a dynamic established during childhood with our parents and our siblings that remains intact. Juliet Judd was, and alwlays will be, the Judd's brightest star, though all three children possessed strengths. This is a testment to the significance and lasting impact childhood and family has on the individual.

A touching novel about overcoming family trials

There are many different types of "family novels" being written in today's insular world, and sadly not all of them are worth reading. There are those that read like personal memoirs --- maudlin accounts of dysfunctional upbringings and unforgotten family rifts that often sound like the author is using his or her writing to work through psychological problems left over from childhood (i.e. whining). There are also those that boast an overarching theory about The State of The Contemporary Family and a ripped-apart value system without really delivering a graspable narrative. And then there are those that, despite their minor flaws, deliver an amicable mix of engrossing story and "state-of-things philosophizing" so that by the time the book has concluded, its readers feel that they not only have had an entertaining and informative look-see into someone else's family life, but that they have also realized a thing or two about their own. Man Booker-shortlisted and Whitbread-winning author Justin Cartwright's latest offering is thankfully the latter of the three. A slow-to-unfold yet rightfully deliberate stroll through the contours of human suffering and a story that recognizes the importance of hope as an offset to seemingly irreversible tragedy, THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS describes one family's pieced-together attempt at redemption following a far-reaching misfortune that threatens to break them apart permanently. At 32, Juliet Judd is at the height of her life. She has a cheeky, hip gallery-owner boyfriend, a gorgeous Upper East Side apartment, an Oxford education and a prestigious job at the preeminent Christie's in New York. In the midst of it all, she is convicted of an alleged crime --- it is questionable whether she plays an active part in it or not --- and is sentenced to what turns out to be three years in prison. The fact that there were others responsible for stealing and reselling the Tiffany's glass window is beside the point, according to the court. She is the one who wrote the checks. She is the one with the prestigious reputation. She is the one who must take the fall. In her absence, the Judd family silently unravels --- each in their own twisted struggle to reconcile the condemnation of their prodigal daughter/sister. Her father Charles loses his business as well as his grasp on reality, withering away into a frail shadow of his former self. Her mother Daphne realizes the depths of her unhappiness and tries to fill the seemingly endless empty hours with pointless cooking classes and gardening. Her sister Sophie drops out of school, starts doing drugs, and has an affair with her boss, twenty years her senior. Her brother Charlie, despite becoming successful in a burgeoning self-started Internet business, enters into a relationship with a gorgeous yet seemingly vacuous woman, Ana. Although Ana is pregnant and they have plans to marry, it is questionable as to whether or not Charlie actually loves her. Without Ju-Ju to hold the famil

insightful character driven tale

The last few years have been rough on the usually successful Judd family of Cornwall, England. It started three years ago when prodigal daughter art historian Juliet was convicted in New York for selling stolen Tiffany windows purloined from a Queens cemetery. She has just been released from prison though she never committed the crime; her boyfriend actually stole the contraband. Her father is ashamed by the desecration almost as much as the conviction; he also struggles with having lost his position several years ago. Her brother Charlie, a successful business man, picks his sister up at the airport, but remains distant from her as she let him down with the theft; he also contemplates whether he really wants to marry though he is engaged to do so shortly. Her other sibling Sophie the TV producer blames her shortcomings on Juliet's disgrace though the drugs and the married man is all her own doing. Meanwhile mom avoids everyone's issues as she hides behind cooking. The five Judds are back in Cornwell for the first time in years and will either kill each other or turn to each other for comfort. Readers will run the gamut of emotions as they will see their own family in the distraught Judd brood. The tale is obviously character driven as the quintet elicits laughter and tears for an enthralled audience who will wonder if Justin Cartwright is writing about their family. Fans will appreciate this powerful look at family foolishness that makes the Judds us and us the Judds. Harriet Klausner