The Promise of Happiness - Hardcover

A powerful story examines the layers of intimacies and idiocies with an ordinary family, the Judds, that reveals the dramatic implications of the release from prison of Juliet, the prodigal daughter, and her reunion with her siblings and parents. Reader's Guide available. 20,000 first printing.

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 dying society. For her mother, it is a source not only of resentment, but bafflement. And for all of the Judds, it is a moment of both intense joy and confusion.

As Justin Cartwright’s novel opens, Juliet’s parents await her release and return to England. Charlie, their capable and successful son, has been charged with collecting her and softening her reentry into the world, his own life unsettled meanwhile by his glamorous girlfriend's pregnancy and his ambivalence towards it. Sophie, the youngest and most rebellious sibling, is in the midst of getting her chaotic life (mostly) under control. And Juliet herself is wounded, the perfect daughter made scapegoat for a victimless crime.

With searching perception and gentle humor, Justin Cartwright gradually reveals the inner struggles of the five disparate Judds as they grapple with their conflicting feelings for each other and the moral dilemmas that beset them, bringing them finally together in what is ultimately a celebration of the layers and universal oddness of the love of a family.

British Praise for The Promise of Happiness:

“A storming piece of work. Such is the pull of Cartwright’s narrative, the curious expertise that he brings to so many parts of human behavior, the sense of authority, that the reader is eternally seduced.”—Independent on Sunday

“The elegant assurance of its opening passages induces in the reader an almost incredulous admiration—as for some astonishing feat of physical strength and grace—that lasts right to the final sentence. Cartwright beautifully and inexorably constructs a tragedy of noble reticence and oddness, in which even hope (for hope remains, at the bottom of the box, when all the sorrow and wickedness has emerged) has a changeling aspect.”—Sunday Telegraph

“A touching, beautifully observed novel written with precision and sympathy.”—Spectator

“Grandeur is what Justin Cartwright is after in this extraordinarily bold novel. This is a funny, angry, moving novel. Cartwright threads the bright hues of America through the grey-green shades of England, like the play of patterned light in the stained-glass windows that loom so large in this brilliant novel. The finale is a rich and highly improbable settling of accounts, a kind of Shakespearean revel, a brazen manipulation of destinies, which seems both absurd and absolutely right.”—Independent

“Robust, technically dazzling realist writing...devastating breadth of empathy.”—Time Out