As arts editor, I field a lot of requests for reviews, most of which I have to turn down due to the simple issue of capacity. There are only so many hours in a day. The plot has to be pretty powerful in order to squeeze past my defenses. It’s a greater testament when I can’t put down the book I’ve agreed to consider for review. Like Happiness, the debut novel by now-local author Ursula Villarreal–Moura, is that book, which will be out March 26. Tatum Vega is the book’s narrator and protagonist, taking us between two, beautifully depicted periods of time in her life as she reckons with a messy relationship from her past. In 2015, Tatum lives in Chile with her partner, Vera, and has a dream job. Bossa nova fills the pages. But 10 years earlier she was a loner in college—a low-income Mexican student from San Antonio at a very White school in New England—who prefers books to people. So it’s utterly magical when she seemingly befriends M. Domínguez, an acclaimed author who’s roughly a decade older. Tatum’s young adulthood on the East Coast is overpowered by Domínguez, their relationship always lingering in a gray area of sex, romance, and friendship. If Chile feels like you’re reading golden hour, the parts in New York feel as gray as the murky space between the two characters. (The bit of the book that takes place in Villarreal-Moura’s hometown of San Antonio feels as bright as the Texas sun at midday.) Like Happiness gives readers a lot to chew on, but questions of race, identity, and sexuality are recurring, and though the book’s present is set two years before #MeToo blew up, the story courses with questions of wrong, right, and the complicated and sometimes intoxicating nature of unhealthy power dynamics. Ursula Villarreal-Moura discusses Like Happiness with Lupita Aquino at 7 p.m. on March 28 at Loyalty Bookstore in Petworth. Loyaltybookstores.com. Free, but registration is required. —Sarah Marloff
Ursula Villarreal-Moura, Like Happiness, March 28
