More Happy Than Not

Imagine a brain filled with memories, each one a piece of furniture in a vast, cluttered room. There’s the heavy armchair of a deep sorrow, the wobbly end table of an embarrassing moment, the sun-warmed windowsill of a perfect afternoon. Some pieces are cherished heirlooms; others are broken, sharp-edged junk you keep tripping over in the dark. Now, what if a service came to your door, offering to professionally remove any piece of furniture you pointed to? They wouldn’t just hide it in the attic; they’d haul it away, leaving a clean, empty space where the painful or unwanted memory used to be. The splintered chair of a first heartbreak? Gone. The looming, dark armoire of a family tragedy? Vanished. It sounds like a perfect solution, a path to a clean, well-lit life. But what happens to the room itself? When you remove the heavy armchair of grief, do you also lose the memory of the person who sat in it with you? Does removing one piece of the set make the others feel incomplete, unstable, or just… wrong?

This question of whether we can surgically remove our sadness without losing ourselves is at the heart of Adam Silvera’s work. Growing up as a queer Puerto Rican kid in the Bronx, Silvera understood what it was like to carry memories that felt too heavy, to wish for a way to edit out the parts of his story that brought pain or invited judgment. He wrote his debut novel, More Happy Than Not, as an exploration of his own deep-seated anxieties and desires. He channeled his own experiences with depression and his identity into the character of Aaron Soto, creating a story that feels less like it was plotted and more like it was bled onto the page, asking whether a life without painful memories is truly a happier one, or just an emptier room.

Module 1: The Allure of the Blank Slate

The story opens in a low-income Bronx neighborhood where trauma is a part of the landscape. For sixteen-year-old Aaron Soto, grief is a constant companion. His father recently died by suicide, and Aaron is still recovering from his own attempt. In this world, a company called the Leteo Institute offers a radical solution: a medical procedure to erase specific, painful memories. Initially, this sounds like science fiction. But it quickly becomes a tangible, tempting escape.

The first insight here is that technology offering an escape from pain will always find a desperate market. Aaron sees Leteo as a potential cure for his relentless heartache. He learns a peer used the procedure to forget the guilt of his twin brother's murder. Aaron's own mother collects Leteo pamphlets, a quiet symbol of her hope for a technological fix to their family's suffering. The procedure isn't just an abstract concept; it's a constant, whispered promise of relief. Standing in the shower where his father died, Aaron actively catalogs the memories he’d pay to have buried. The appeal is visceral. It’s personal.

Then, there is the social pressure. The book shows how communities often enforce a performance of happiness, making authentic grief feel like a social failure. Aaron dreads an upcoming "Family Day" event. He knows everyone will expect smiles, forcing him and others to mask their pain. This pressure to appear "okay" extends to his friendships. His bond with his best friend has frayed, and he admits it’s just one more thing he has to pretend he’s fine with. The constant performance is exhausting. It drains the emotional resources needed for genuine happiness, making a quick fix like Leteo even more appealing.

And here's the thing. This desire for escape isn't just about big traumas. It's also about the daily grind of poverty and social strain. Socioeconomic hardship physically and emotionally depletes the capacity for joy. Aaron’s mother is on what he calls a "Poverty Diet," her body literally shrinking from the stress of working two jobs. Her exhaustion is a physical manifestation of their struggle. For Aaron, the world is a series of small humiliations, like not having enough money for a comic book, that compound his fragile self-esteem. The Leteo procedure represents a fantasy of wiping away the person who has been shaped by pain.

Module 2: The Architecture of Memory and Identity

As we move into the core of Aaron's story, the Leteo procedure becomes more than just a background element. It becomes a central player in his relationships and his search for self. Aaron begins a new relationship with a girl named Genevieve, and he clings to their positive memories as proof of his worth.

This brings us to a critical idea. We curate our memories to construct a survivable narrative of ourselves. Aaron consciously replays the memory of Genevieve asking him out. He needs it to counteract the shame from his suicide attempt. Later, he even stages a playful "breakup" just so they can have a "fresh start," an attempt to manually overwrite a painful chapter with a happy one. He is actively trying to be the director of his own life story, choosing which scenes to highlight and which to cut. This desire for control is a fundamental human impulse. We all do it. We build our identities on the stories we tell ourselves about our past.

But memory is not so easily managed. Genevieve is skeptical of Leteo. She argues the procedure doesn't erase memories, it just suppresses them. This introduces a key conflict. Forgetting is a form of self-amputation that leaves phantom pains. Genevieve believes true happiness requires integrating the past, not erasing it. She uses art to process her own complex emotions, painting strange, imaginative scenes that reflect her inner turmoil. Aaron, in contrast, uses his love for comics to escape into heroic narratives. Their differing approaches to processing reality—one through expression, the other through escapism—drive a wedge between them.

Eventually, the pressure becomes too much. Aaron’s growing feelings for a new friend, Thomas, throw his identity into chaos. He feels an authentic, effortless connection with Thomas that he has to force with Genevieve. The internal conflict is agonizing. So here's what that means. When our authentic self conflicts with our chosen narrative, the cognitive dissonance becomes unbearable. Aaron’s carefully constructed story of being a "good boyfriend" to Genevieve starts to crumble. The effort of maintaining the facade is immense. He starts to believe the problem isn't the lie, but the truth itself. He concludes that his feelings for Thomas are the "bug" in his system, the source of all his pain. This misguided diagnosis sets him on a collision course with the Leteo Institute.