How to Be Happy

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.
Davis's brightly coloured, melancholic short stories catalogue different approaches to the form -- here a science fiction tale, there a glimpse of suburban young love -- all featuring lost souls desperate for happiness.--Sean Rogers "The Best Books of 2014 "
Imaginative and funny and fanciful, but it's also very thoroughly worked out. She's not afraid to be clear.--Franc, oise Mouly
It's a stunning body of work that brings together loosely personal and wholly fictional stories about joy, anguish, fear and loneliness -- emotions all motivated by that essential quest to be the best you can be.--James Cartwright
The book's a unique showcase for Davis' range, combining everything from minimalist, sketchy cartoons to lushly-illustrated full-color pieces and extended works -- tales that explore the simple-yet-sometimes overwhelming problems of being human.--Zack Smith
I appreciated my time in Eleanor Davis' worlds. She offers plenty of food for the hungry of thought--even if thought may ultimately be the root of our troubles. She invites readers into realms of nostalgia and of mystery and of existential terror. The portholes through which we can view these kingdoms of hope and pain are small and smudged, but we see enough. Enough to apprehend them, enough perhaps even to judge them. And certainly enough to enjoy the experience of their lessons.--Seth T. Hahne
The success of this collection suggests that short pieces are likely Davis' métier, but what's here is so accomplished that it's natural to hope for a book-length work next time out.--Gordon Flagg

...[Davis's] stories often feature tremendous longing and sadness, but they also lushly suggest what a blessing it is to be alive and in the world. She presents, in short, a more realistic picture of what it means to be a human, with our ever-present mind/body tug-of-war, than almost anyone else out there making art. And what art it is: there may be nothing Davis can't beautifully illustrate. ...How to Be Happy is fearless and fantastic, unafraid to break rules or to make new ones.

--Hillary Brown
How to Be Happy is an argument for empathy, but not of the call-and-response kind. The stories here know the world is often heavy and intolerable. And also worthwhile; sometimes touched by light, sometimes full of music. Empathy is knowing both sides of the world, shouldering them and carrying on, searching for the still unblemished parts of the soul.--Paul Arrand Rodgers