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"  Who wouldn&amp;#039;t want to feel happy all the time? In Generosity: An Enhancement (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the tenth novel by Richard Powers (a Mac\u00ADArthur \u00ADgenius whose last book, The Echo Maker, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist), Russell Stone is a mild-mannered writing teacher who finds one of his students, 23-year-old refugee Thassa Amzwar, to be preter\u00ADnaturally joyful. Obsessed by how her good mood persists despite the \u00ADhorrors she survived in Algeria and the urban indig\u00ADnities she faces in Chicago, \u00ADRussell starts to suspect it&amp;#039;s all due to gene\u00ADtics. But when he carelessly outs Thassa to the happiness-mad world, the woman known as &amp;quot;Miss Generosity&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Bliss Chick&amp;quot; to her classmates becomes the goose with the \u00ADgolden egg to a scientist bent on replicating and profiting from her &amp;quot;happy gene.&amp;quot; The ensuing media circus and science frenzy threaten to take \u00ADThassa down, and Russell tries to save her, whatever the cost to himself and the woman he plans to marry. Powers&amp;#039; achievement is to depict Thassa without annoyingly caricaturing her in a novel that&amp;#039;s not about the struggle between glad and sad but about the \u00ADvulnerability of fragile joys to \u00ADhumans who are emotionally stunted but techno\u00ADlogically advanced. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a10455/generosity-an-enhancement-349059/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>