English writer Jem Calder’s debut novel, I Want You To Be Happy, reports from the frontlines of modern-day dating. His book is good – but the news is not.

A man in his mid-30s who recently broke off his engagement with his longtime girlfriend meets a young woman at a crowded London bar. He’s a copywriter, she’s a 23-year-old barista. Despite his intention not to talk about his breakup, he finds himself “shouting specific details directly in her ear.” “Pretty intense,” she yells back. He apologizes. “No-no, I like it,” she yells. “It’s like boarding a plane. You go baggage first.”

Neither can think what to say next. After an “interpersonal silence containing all the bar-noise,” they share a few drinks, their first names (Chuck and Joey), some quips about their 12 year age gap and her lack of what he calls “a real job.” They end up at his luxury apartment, which is far nicer than her crowded shared flat.

In other words, Calder’s characters have boarded a plane, baggage first — with no idea where it will land. Will it lead to an actual relationship, nevermind happiness?

Calder made a splash with his first book, Reward System, a collection of six interconnected short stories about young adults linked by social media yet adrift and alienated in today’s fragmented digital world. The title of one story, “Distraction from Sadness is Not the Same Thing as Happiness,” could also work for this closely observed, sad-but-sympathetic novel about the cagey, jittery dance that characterizes the modern-day mating game.

Chuck and Joey are guarded and uncertain. We get to know them better than they get to know each other — their insecurities and disappointments with themselves as well as others. Their fundamental imbalances — age, financial, commitment levels — lead to a wobbly connection. The discovery that they share literary aspirations (poetry for her, prose for him) and write around their day jobs opens up the potential for some sort of bond. Their nascent relationship stirs “a dormant feeling of possibility” in both of them. But a talent gap opens up an abyss. (I won’t say who has more.)

Joey is hopeful, always on stand-by for texts: “A new person finding you interesting makes you feel new,” she ruminates in this tight, third person narrative that alternates between the male and female perspective. Interestingly, although the author is male, the female character comes across as far more sympathetic.

We’d progressed from walking in the park to perching across from each other in my living room to sitting side by side on the family room sofa. It was grief that drew us. A year earlier we’d both lost our beloved, vibrant spouses to cancer. Though his wife and I had been in the same women’s book group, I’d known Eric only through the wry gripes we’d all made about our husbands.

Now he took my face in his hands. Here it comes, I thought. Was I ready for this? Looking deep into my eyes he asked, “Would you nap with me?”

Apparently, this was what dating looked like in one’s 60s. As he snored companionably, I wondered how I’d handle our next progression, whatever that would be. My husband had devotedly nursed me through my own illness, only to be hit by one far worse. We and our two sons had been the closest of families, their father their best friend. As much as I knew they needed me, I was racked by survivor’s guilt — ashamed still to be alive. If I was mortified just to breathe, how could I even think about loving another man?

For months, Eric and I lurked about. Although he lacked the sense I had that we were cheating on our spouses, we both felt we were somehow cheating on our children. That his one child and my two were often at our respective homes made for tricky logistics. So we leased new life from the city.

Guided by Eric, we watched planes from the viewing deck at the Santa Monica Airport, where he explained Bernoulli’s principle. We wandered the Mar Vista Farmer’s Market, where he introduced me to the vendors he’d known for decades and taught me to top berry trays with tiny nets he’d made to hold the fruit in place. We saw L.A. Theater Works record plays at UCLA’s Melnitz Hall, where the primal storytelling of actors reading lines and Foley artists adding sounds riveted me more than a Broadway spectacle. On these outings, I learned not just about flight, farm-to-table and fabulism, but about Eric. He was a man fully engaged in life.

Guided by me, we took classes at Santa Monica Yoga, Eric treating himself afterward to a sandwich at Bob’s Market from the deservedly self-proclaimed Deli Lama. We walked our way through my L.A.-on-foot book, from Castellammare and Leimert Park to Pasadena, delighting in the architectural mashup Nathanael West derided in “The Day of the Locust” as “Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas” and “Egyptian and Japanese temples.” Eric especially admired the Witch’s House in Beverly Hills, the Shakespeare Bridge in Franklin Hills and the stained glass windows in Carthay Circle. He learned not just about poses, pastrami and parapets, but about me. I was a woman fully engaged in life.

We also learned we were both determined to seize the day after seeing the rest of our spouses’ days seized from them. My guilt persisted. But this good man had found a route from the sofa to the city to my heart.

We finally met each other’s children. The days we seized became weeks, months and years. Our sons, though forever brokenhearted, thrived. Mine had children of their own, all with names that begin with “A” to honor their father. The oldest, at four, understands from photos that she has another grandpa, understands that the man in the picture is her daddy’s daddy. Her parents and I tell her about him: his kindness, grace, humor, wisdom. “I wish I could have known him,” she says.

“I do too,” I say, “more than anything.” When the others are old enough, we’ll tell them, too, about him. They’ll feel his essence because their fathers are just like him. He’ll stay, this way, in and around us.

Ever-gracious, Eric holds this space for him, as I try to do for his wife with their son. But becoming a grandmother only increased my guilt. My husband, consummate family man, was born to be a grandfather. Yet here I was, without him, flying high on the joy of grandparenting. What could I do besides love the children and grandchildren fiercely and be grateful for the privilege?

I could do this: recognize that if it takes a village to raise a child, the more villagers who love the child the better. My lucky grandchildren will feel their grandfather’s love by proxy and Eric’s love firsthand. They can even enjoy the love of Eric’s son, who patiently helps them build Lego worlds and cooks them their favorite soup.

Even as he holds space for my husband, Eric affectionately fills his own. He’s a tall man with a deep voice, an easy laugh and a warm embrace. He marvels at the latest evidence of the grandchildren’s genius, like any grandfather should, and spoils them with treats and toys. He’s so handy around their houses that my grandson greets him with, “What’re you gonna fix today?”

His most recent project involved the crib my husband and I had saved from our sons’ infancy with the hope that grandchildren would one day use it. Since the distance between slats was now deemed unsafe, Eric transformed the crib into blocks. “I wanted to honor the spirit of what you’d both wished for,” he said.

Then and now. Loss and gain. Selfless love.

For years now, Eric and I have both lived in my house. There are still naps, but more bustle. Our sons live close enough that we’re together a lot, and my house tends to be the happy hub. The grandchildren play near photos of their grandpa. Their “A” names ring out in this home where we raised their fathers. Meanwhile, Eric pulls them around on a rug he rigged as a magic carpet and helps stack the blocks into towers. When the grandchildren leave, he hugs them tight. My guilt remains, like pain in a phantom limb, but the sofa holds us all.

The author is a law school professor, researcher and author of an upcoming book on the scientifically proven neural superpowers of grandmothers. She lives on the Westside. She’s on Instagram @rondafoxwrites, and her website is rondafox.com.

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George Orwell famously wrote that it takes a constant struggle to see what’s in front of one’s nose. That may be truer than ever. These days we barely register things that 20 years ago would’ve seemed downright bizarre — like people staring down at their phones in busy crosswalks. The unnatural comes to seem natural.

Until it doesn’t. This has happened with the proliferation of data centers all over America. After years of ignoring their mushrooming growth — there are over 4,000 in the U.S. — the public now sees them clearly and doesn’t like what they represent, be it soaring energy bills or the advent of job-killing AI. People now oppose having data centers in their communities. In real life — and in movies like Eddington — politicians are now pulled between their constituents’ desires and the devouring needs of Big Tech.

The hatred of data centers ignites the action in Cloudthief, a boisterous new novel that’s equal parts heist thriller and cry in the digital wilderness. It was written by novelist Nathaniel Rich, who may be best known for ecological non-fiction such as his 2019 book Losing Earth. Setting his story back in 2014 — when tech billionaires were still considered visionaries, not bullying moguls — Cloudthief centers on a brainy young man who, like the guy in the Leonard Cohen song, is just some Joseph looking for a manger.

Our narrator “Tim” — a pseudonym he says — is a freelance writer who’s gone broke doing magazine articles about climate change. He’s lonely and lost until he stumbles upon Virginia (also not her real name), who could be the American cousin of dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander.

Tech-savvy and paranoid and scarily elusive, Virginia lives off the grid in a Manhattan mini-storage unit and has plans for a blow against Big Tech. Evidently, Tim has never seen a noir movie because he doesn’t merely fall for this 21st-century fantasy of a femme fatale, he dreamily goes along with her plans to rob a data center in Pryor, Okla., and make off with the sellable information their servers contain.

Once they drive off to Pryor — Rich describes their road trip wonderfully — Cloudthief kicks into high gear, serving up the juicy stuff that we all love in a heist story. We see the baroque planning. We watch them case their target, a silver-smoke spewing behemoth that has the majestic size of two futuristic airport terminals but is actually as tacky as a boondocks mini-mall.