The stories in Happy Stories, Mostly have a restricted thematic range, mostly set in Indonesia, featuring gay students from a Batak and Christian background and/or their mothers, involving a suicide, and so forth. This doesn't feel repetitive, however, because they have a wide variety in mood, plot, style, and length, ranging from comedy to tragedy, from the real to the surreal, from metafiction to science fiction, from one page to thirty two, and so forth. And the stories are mostly not that happy, but neither are they bleak, with a certain gentleness and humour always present.

It's not clear how much of these stories is autobiographical, but one assumes Pasaribu is largely drawing on his own experience. It will be interesting to see if he can broaden his range.

December 2024

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