Hayata Gülümse

The book opens with a modern paradox: we earn more than in the past, live in bigger houses, enjoy health care a hundred thousand times better — yet we are unhappier and sicker. Mehmed the Conqueror, the author notes, never had the pleasure of crossing the Bosphorus Bridge at two hundred kilometres an hour or eating tomatoes in winter; we do, and still we are not happy. Then come US consumption figures: 5% of the world's population using 30% of its resources, 40 million people with sleep problems, 45 million taking prescription psychiatric drugs. None of the figures is sourced.

The weakest page concerns the fate of celebrities. The author lists the early deaths of stars who had the life we think will make us happy, but the names are mangled beyond recognition: «Robert Johns», «Fredy Mercury», «Jimy Henriks», «Jen y Jopi», «John Wolham», drummer of «Let Zepperi», and «Don Scott» of AC/DC. This is more than a typo; it shows the author does not know the subject well. The same section quotes an interview in which a famous Turkish entertainer admits to grinding teeth from stress and taking muscle relaxants.

The section on «postponing» happiness works better. The author describes a familiar chain: «I'll be happy if I get into university», then «if I graduate», «if I find a job», «if I marry», «if I have a daughter», «and a son», «if I buy a house» — and at each stage happiness moves further away. A seminar participant in the back row protesting «No, sir, first a boy, then a girl — we're from Trabzon!» is retold as a joke. The line «If you've joined a housing cooperative, laughing is forbidden for seven or eight years — you're paying instalments» is the liveliest moment in the book.

The most moving story comes from a shanty neighbourhood. The author visits the family of a very successful student at a cram school: the sixth child of a father on the minimum wage, a two-room house, glasses borrowed from a neighbour to serve the visitors tea. Yet the looks, the conversation and the warmth in that family make the author exclaim: «This is happiness!» In contrast stand families who eat from separate plates at a luxurious table without anyone speaking. The comparison is simple but sincere and conveys the book's main message well: happiness lies in relationships, not money.

Another problem concerns quotations. A poem beginning «We worked as if racing... we kept postponing» is attributed to the Turkish poet Orhan Veli, and the author even recounts the poet's death, yet neither its language nor its spirit resembles Orhan Veli's poetry, and no source is given. The poem «If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill, be a scrub in the valley» appears without an author, although it is a loose version of the American poet Douglas Malloch's well-known poem. Some quotations, such as Einstein's «Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value», are genuine but still unsourced.

The «Success» chapter is in the same style: a bee never envies a butterfly, because the butterfly's life is short and it makes no honey; a Yugoslav innkeeper tells a German general, «If we had organisation, I'd be using your field now»; the importance of taking risks and leaving one's comfort zone; John Maxwell's list of «what failure is not». In the end this is a collection of advice that might move an audience at a seminar but remains weak on the page.

• A warm, direct address like a seminar talk
• A few lively and funny examples from everyday life
• Short chapters and quick-reading language