How To Be Happy - Tapa dura

This collection... is impressively varied and emotionally resonant. With images ranging from scratchy black-and-white line drawings to robust images saturated with color, Davis is comfortable in a variety of styles, carefully choosing each one to best fit her tone and mood.--Kelly Thompson

Davis is rightfully a rising talent, and one of her greatest gifts is her ability to build narrative momentum. She creates suspense, mystery and come-hither curiosity by never overtipping her artful hand.--Michael Cavna "Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2014 "

Sad or happy, Davis is one of the greats. So is this book.--Sean T. Collins

This collection is astounding because of how hard Davis works to sequence each story and provide appropriate interstitial material. Seeing all of these stories at once provides a remarkable and surprising sense of cohesiveness, as many of them are about restless, lost, and sometimes doomed people. The drawings, the use of color, and the overall packaging all fit into this feeling of reading almost a hand-made item.--Rob Clough

Whether she's working in ink or in color, in longer or shorter stories, from slice of life to science fiction Davis shows herself to be a gifted and versatile storyteller.--Alex Dueben

The book contains about 12 strange, beautifully drawn short stories, depending on how you count them, as well as several short vignettes. None of the stories is especially linear. Each feels almost like a sketch from experimental theater: disturbing, and emotionally pungent.--Karen Sandstrom

This collection of short stories about people desperately trying to suppress or embrace or just somehow deal with all the difficult emotions careening around in their brain just underscores... that [Davis] is a tremendous talent, and one of the smartest voices working in comics today.--Chris Mautner

Davis plays with different styles, while simultaneously mesmerizing the reader with the color choices. Her watercolors in particular are beyond gorgeous, and funny enough, the reader can feel a rush of happiness after reading the book in its entirety.--Cameron Hatheway

Lies! Deceit and rank mendacity! Eleanor Davis promises what current pop music insists is perfectly possible -- that you can be happy -- and then she doesn't deliver. Instead she draws comics full of hilarious surrealism, gut-tugging tropes and eloquent despair. How dare she? ... In her roundabout way, she dramatizes not the prospect of happiness, but the promise of it. Her natural territory is found in all the funny and tragic effects of that promise.--Etelka Lehoczky

[Starred Review] The excellence and variety of the art in this short comics story collection is matched only by the painful incisiveness of the stories, most circling around attempts both foolish and sincere to find happiness. Some of Davis's art styles are reminiscent of her children's books (Secret Science Alliance, Stinky)--simple supple black and white line drawings--others resemble Little Golden Books, bright blocks of colors and button nosed characters, but only as if written by Raymond Carver. ... A powerful collection that resonates with all the ills, real and imagined, of our modern life.

Eleanor Davis’s How to be Happy is the artist’s first collection of graphic/literary short stories. Davis is one of the finest cartoonists of her generation, and has been producing comics since the mid-2000s. Happy represents the best stories she’s drawn for such curatorial venues as Mome and No-Brow, as well as her own self-publishing and web efforts. Davis achieves a rare, subtle poignancy in her narratives that are at once compelling and elusive, pregnant with mystery and a deeply satisfying emotional resonance. Happy shows the full range of Davis’s graphic skills ― sketchy drawing, polished pen and ink line work, and meticulously designed full color painted panels― which are always in the service of a narrative that builds to a quietly devastating climax.