Mid-80s, subversive androgynous pop everywhere, AIDS scare, Marie finds herself sixteen years old in Zürich, well-off child of well-off parents with well-off friends, hormones surging all over the place, parents barely present if they're even in the same country. Parties, make-outs, music, VHS, alcohol, ski trips, discos, make-outs, alcohol...

Should be fun. The happy life of the title.

Except her young aunt is dying of cancer (hence her mother's absence), which is horrible, and while everyone else is pairing up Marie is helplessly in love with Diane, which is wonderful, but impossible. Diane, who the boys all say "oozes sex", who is happy to play with the idea and lead Marie on, but is either too straight or too chickenshit to not keep running back to her boyfriend, and can't understand why it's such a big deal for Marie who has everything to lose.

Man, how Bouraoui writes; obsessively sketches every conflicting emotion of grief and love and infatuation and desire and fear and hatred in a hailstorm of minute brushstrokes, short chapters, her narrator yanked back and forth in the storms of adolescence, love and self-discovery. And somehow, despite all the heartache, it still earns the title without necessarily going for the obvious happy ending.