The Best of Good: A Novel [Hardcover]

Sara Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2003

Life was fine for Tom Good, called Good by almost everyone. He was actually getting paid to play music, started the band Point Blank, and penned three hits that became forever lodged in his generation's collective memory. Then, for no apparent reason and to everyone's surprise, he walked away from it all.

That was more than twenty years ago. Now Good has settled into a low-key life, writing and recording songs in his closet studio during the day and bartending in a San Diego music club at night. He feels so grounded and secure in his well-established routines with regard to his relationships, his clothes, his food, and his apartment, that minor alterations in these rituals can cause him to break out into a sweat. But the carefully crafted predictability of his life flies out the window the day Good learns that one of his old girlfriends is the single mother of a ten-year-old boy who looks just like him.

Sara Lewis, who won readers over with her previous novels, including "Second Draft of My Life" and "The Answer Is Yes," once again reveals the ironies of everyday life with her signature humor and poignancy. "The Best of Good" is an irresistible tale of coming-of-age at the mid-point in life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A middle-aged musician attempts to catapult himself into a belated adulthood in Lewis's (Second Draft of My Life) mildly amusing fifth novel. Tom Good, a 47-year-old San Diego-area bartender with a susceptibility to "music-induced flashbacks," is going about his usual business (eating frozen dinners, plucking gray hairs, writing songs in his closet studio and dodging responsibility and change) until he gets a startling piece of news: he might be a father. When a friend informs Good that a beautiful former girlfriend is the single mother of a boy with his "same dark hair with that cowlick over here, same mouth," Good reaches out. Diana isn't too keen on re-establishing a relationship, and her 10-year-old son, Jack, isn't wild about it, either. But Good begins to examine his life, anyway: the reasons he left his band before hitting it big (though he still gets royalties from their songs), the pain his brother's death caused him, the reasons he feels so isolated and confused. He buys a bunch of new furniture and housewares, too ("I tried to throw stuff away that looked messy or made me seem immature"), but becoming an adult just isn't that easy. Still, his good intentions mean friendly exchanges with an elderly neighbor and a growing warmth between him and the single mother of the cute but noisy brood next door. Lewis gives Good an authentic (and sometimes slightly pathetic) voice, and readers may find themselves rooting for a man who's finally realizing what it means to be one.
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About the Author

Sara Lewis is the author of four other novels, Second Draft of My Life, The Answer Is Yes, But I Love You Anyway, and Heart Conditions, as well as the collection Trying to Smile and Other Stories. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, McCall's, Redbook, Mademoiselle, Seventeen, Good Housekeeping, and other magazines as well as on National Public Radio. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two children.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Atria; 1st Atria edition (December 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743436717
• ISBN-13: 978-0743436717
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,059,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best of Good - the best of Sara Lewis!, May 16, 2004

By 

"[e-mail]" (Herndon, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best of Good: A Novel (Hardcover)

Having just finished reading "The Best of Good", there are tears in my eyes. This book moved me deeply, while also providing hours of enjoyment. Writing in the first person, as a man, was an amazing feat for Sara, who continues to surprise me with her books. I've read all her novels, and this one rates right up there and, in fact, it's hard to choose a favorite. The characters were so very real to me. There are even things about Tom Good that I can recognize within myself. His struggles to start living his life again after isolating for 20 years made me examine my life, too. The children, his neighbors and his sister Ellen were all so realistic. They all have their layers of complexity, which Sara presents so brilliantly.

Read this book and see if you want to start making a quilt, upgrading your surroundings, getting closer to the people around you, and maybe even forgiving yourself for guilt that you should not have assumed for things in the past. This is a powerful book, in the guise of light entertainment! Absolute bravos for this, and I highly recommend it!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving story of love, loss and redemption, December 11, 2003

By 

Kinsey Millhone (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best of Good: A Novel (Hardcover)

When I heard that one of my favorite authors, Anne Tyler, had written a book from a male point of view (A PATCHWORK PLANET), I was a bit nervous. Could Tyler authentically write a male voice? Indeed, I found the character totally believable and it was one of my all-time favorite Tyler books. Now Sara Lewis, an author who reminds me a bit of Tyler, has done the same thing with THE BEST OF GOOD. It's written from the first-person point of view of Tom Good, a musician whose traumatic past has led him to live an almost cloistered life until a shocking surprise helps draw him out of his shell.

I don't want to give away too much detail about the plot, since the book has a lot of twists & turns -- it's the kind of novel I found hard to put down because I wanted to know what would happen next! I really got caught up in Good's story, and found him to be a flawed but likable character -- the kind of guy you root for.

The one issue I have with Lewis's books -- and this was also very true of SECOND DRAFT OF MY LIFE, her most recent novel before GOOD -- is that the author obviously loves her protagonists so much that by the end of her books, it's almost as if she feels sorry about all the things she's put them through and gives them fairy-tale endings that just seem a little too good to be true (no pun intended). However, Lewis continues to be one of my favorite contemporary novelists, and THE BEST OF GOOD is, indeed, one of her best books.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Page Turner, December 15, 2003

By 

J. Robinson (Thousand Oaks, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Best of Good: A Novel (Hardcover)

I am a big fan of Sara Lewis's, and was thrilled to hear that she had written a new novel. This book, like her others, was wonderful. It's a real challenge to write from the point of view of the opposite sex, and I think she pulled it off beautifully. The character of Tom Good was like a little bit of all of us, I think--stagnant in some ways, blocked off, surrounded by his own demons, and afraid of change. But he made a real change throughout the course of the book, as did the characters around him (his sister Ellen, his neighbor Ellen, and even his son). I also loved reading about his songs and his guitar playing, how it was like a security blanket for him. The book moved quickly (and so did time!) and I definitely recommend it if you want to read a story about a real person, flawed just like the rest of us, who comes full circle to an understanding about his life and his past. And I am definitely looking forward to the author's next novel!