After her novel The Gathering won last year's Booker Prize, Irish writer Anne Enright said, "When people pick up a book, they may want something to cheer them up. In that case, they shouldn't really pick up my book...My book is the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie." Reviewers have described the novel as "harrowing", "devastating", and (my favourites) "horribly skilfull" and exhibiting "exhilarating bleakness".

Sounds like fun.

I have read Enright's work and yes, it's brilliant. But I'd hesitate to recommend it. I'd like to champion the other side. The not so dark side, that doesn't have cookies.

I am writing in support of the chortle! The giggle! The guffaw! I know that guy laughs like a jackal, and has this really vicious eye twitch that kinda freaks me out, but let him!

When was the last time you finished a novel with your spirit absolutely soaring? Anyone? The last time a book made you read with a stupid grin and sore abs? Remember sitting on the train watching the person opposite chuckle as they turn the pages? Seriously, me neither.

More likely it was a charming cannibalising, child dismembering, man-castrating, forensic chop-shop thriller, or a torturous story of sacrifice and loss, losing love, struggling with injustice and grieving. And at least one character will die. More likely the person opposite was reading with a furrowed brow.

In the past few years we've come to understand that what you eat and drink will show up in the lovely form of love handles and choking arteries. We comprehend that junk food in excess plays its part in obesity. Without counteraction with exercise your body will suffer the consequences.

Less immediately obvious is the potential to make the same link with our minds. What we put into it - books, films, and yeah, blogs - does not leave our thinking unaffected if truly engaged with. How negative is my writing? How often do I write something with a smile? How often do I read something with a smile? It's something worth thinking about. Every day we lose good people who see the world as too hopeless, devastating and bleak to go on. A recommendation of a novel that speaks of betrayal, hate and suffering probably isn't the most tactful offering one could give them as a friend.

I'm not advocating literature full of happy-clappy sunshine bunnies, where bluebirds and rainbows guide friends into each other's arms, and cheery characters dance in the streets in picturesque 1950s gee-whiz endings. That fake, fixed-grin type of story lacks the heart and sincerity a truly good story has, and is more likely to induce book-tossing rage and boredom than a warm afterglow.

But equally, the world is not just a collection of tragedies. There is beauty here too, and humour, and silliness, and fun and not a small amount of love.

Nobel-prize-winning author Andre Gide asked, "What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares, only what destroys it can be told." Tell that to Shakespeare, Zadie Smith, DBC Pierre and other damn rare and funny buggers. A story of happiness is Much ado About Nothing. Cannot Nothing have its place, have its right to make us smile? For every Othello or Macbeth, let there be A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing.

Truth is, a happy story takes real skill to write. It's an easy cop-out to kill your protagonists, it's easy to make them suffer. It can be done with skilful, praise-worthy sty|e but it's even harder to warm your reader's heart.

I recently had two pieces of writing short listed in a project, one happy, one tragic. It was judged by a panel of published writers, and they gave me their critique. They all grinned at the first title. "Young lady, this writing had a beautiful smile, you made our Monday morning." But it was the second, a brutal rollercoaster of misfortune that took the win, because, it "left us feeling mercilessly manipulated." Basically, "congratulations on excellent sadism". (But in truth, the happy was more demanding. I left thinking - "My gosh! It made that whole panel smile on a Monday morning! How does that happen?").

Are authors afraid? Afraid of writing a joke no-one will laugh at, when they can so easily write about pain we can all relate to? Is a depressing read a well-written read because it succeeded in making you depressed? Are we envisioning the world we'd like to live in? Why is a silly and fun comic book considered too crass beside a morbid graphic novel? Is the frown valued more than the laugh?

I defend the odd literary giggle. Dark and gloomy books are all well and good but wouldn't a humorous and happy read be novel?

Heh, lame puns rule.

Happy reading to you! :)

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This is an editorial for the Monkeys Writing Shakespeare. But seeing as there's no Soapbox category I can't mark this Editorial. *eye twitch*. Ah well, check out the monkeys. They're some cool kids.