The Best People in the World: A Novel [Hardcover]

Justin Tussing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2006

In Paducah, Kentucky, seventeen-year-old Thomas feels as reined in as the mighty Ohio, a river confined by high floodwalls protecting his small Southern hometown. But all boundaries vanish when Thomas experiences first love with Alice, his new history teacher, a woman eight years his senior—and when he meets Shiloh, a misfit vagabond and anarchist who becomes his new role model. Fleeing to rural Vermont, this unlikely trio boldly pursues freedom, intimacy, and seclusion, unfettered by commitments and rules. But a life apart from the world does not ensure a life apart from the past—and for one of them, the past that emerges will threaten tragedy.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. What might have been the stuff of boyish fantasies—an affair with a teacher, running away from home, living off the land—goes frighteningly awry in this unsettling but bleakly beautiful debut novel. It's 1972 in Paducah, Ky., and quiet 17-year-old Thomas Mahey falls into an intense affair with his 25-year-old history teacher, Alice Lowe. Independently, they both befriend Shiloh Tanager, a wily, good-hearted local anarchist, and the three hit the road for rural Vermont, determined to live "off the grid." No sooner does the trio settle into an abandoned house than things begin to unravel. Thomas is torn between loyalty to Shiloh and an all-consuming love for Alice, and riddled with guilt for wordlessly leaving his parents. Meanwhile, the homesteaders' efforts at growing food fail. When an unwelcome visitor from Shiloh's past appears, he brings to a head the increasingly desperate atmosphere of secrets and resentment that their idyll has become. Tussing skillfully crafts simultaneously visionary and demented characters (chapters following two men who investigate "miracles" for the Catholic Church punctuate the trio's story), and when an element of the supernatural infiltrates the narrative it seems normal for the deliberately off-kilter people who inhabit this odd but honest, appealing American story. (Feb.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

Tussing, who published a preview of this novel in the New Yorker, offers a melancholic slice of the American mythos that reflects its ideals and tarnished realities. Loving characters, including a narrator looking back on his experiences and emotions, populate the novel, but others, including two priests investigating miracles, left some critics wondering. Best People paints a wonderful canvas of 1970s America, both from the vantage point of the road and an isolated Vermont life, though little actually happens. Despite the imaginative, beautiful writing, this debut novel doesn't perfectly fulfill its promise. The New York Times Book Review sums up the general sentiment by describing the novel as "[e]qual parts euphoria and exhaustion."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1St Edition edition (February 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060815337
• ISBN-13: 978-0060815332
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,857,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved it!, October 31, 2006

By 

Randi Odierno "rodierno" (Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best People in the World: A Novel (Hardcover)

Tussing presents us with a trio of characters, each with a gnawing desire for change and adulthood, during the period of quintessential idealism and loosening morals of the 1970s. Thomas, longing for manhood and a place of his own; Alice, needing to belong somewhere and never quite fitting in and Shiloh, the anarchist, yearning for a sense of family, of love. These hugely diverse friends chance upon curious adventures as they disappear from their small town late at night and end up as 'squatters' living in an abandoned Vermont home. A wonderful, twisting story of love, freedom, despair and growth. A story that grabbed me from page one!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars run of the mill coming of age tale blah blah blah, March 18, 2006

By 

CherubChub (Mesa, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best People in the World: A Novel (Hardcover)

I really hoped this was gonna be a good one. Its about a teenage boy who has an affair with his teacher and they runaway with an eccentric anarchist. It sounds entertaining. The plot is interesting. The writing is decent. The problem is that Tussing is horrible at writing and developing characters. They are so flat. It would probably make a good movie but its not enough to make a good book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A well-written first effort, May 3, 2006

By 

book addict (Sioux Falls, SD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best People in the World: A Novel (Hardcover)

Thomas Mahey feels the literal and figurative walls around him. As the narrator of Justin Tussing's debut novel, The Best People in the World, Thomas takes us with him on his search for freedom.

It is 1972. Thomas is a 17-year-old living in Paducah, Kentucky, a town with a 20-foot high floodwall erected to protect it from the Ohio River. He feels similar walls forming around his life. In the summer before his junior year of high school, his father gets him a job at the local power plant, the same place his father labors much of his life. A self-described "second-tier" student, Thomas is in the vocational program, not the "standard curriculum." It reinforces his sense that his future is being circumscribed. Yet the events of the summer and school year soon lead him on a journey of reinvention.

One summer evening, Thomas happens to meet the man his father calls "the king of the river rats." Shiloh Tanager, who calls himself an anarchist, lives in a shack he built in the floodplain. He is the legendary, almost mythic, young local ne'er-do-well who has returned after an extended absence. Then, when school starts, Thomas finds 25-year-old Alice Lowe teaching his "History of Technology" class. Thomas and Alice begin flirting and eventually fall in love. When Shiloh's shack is destroyed, he ends up moving in with Alice. Shortly thereafter, urged on by Shiloh, the three decide to leave Paducah and strike out on their own.

Their first stop is New York City, where Shiloh insists on meeting up with a friend both Thomas and Alice find ominous. They then head north, ending up in Vermont. After considering joining a local quasi-religious commune, they end up squatting in a remote abandoned farmhouse. The bulk of the novel explores their lives from and after this point. It shows Tussing at his best and his worst.

Tussing excels in creating these characters. He also makes it easy to see and understand things through Thomas' eyes. Whether it is simply Tussing's style or a device conveying the narrator's youth, Tussing builds this tale with precise and generally uncluttered declarative sentences. Here is how he describes the feeling of cabin fever as the three begin to get on each other's nerves around Christmas:That empty brightness outside couldn't reach us. We lived in a vacuum. Heat and sound didn't communicate the way they used to. We were left with degrees of friction. We rattled off one another like billiard balls. We rang like crystal. Nothing could change until those frozen rivulets on the windowpanes ran as meltwater.Such straightforward descriptions and the conversational dialogue of the trio paint the possibilities and frustrations, the highs and lows, and the joys and dangers they encounter. They explore not only their relationships with each other but themselves. Slowly, an undercurrent of discontent and foreboding grows and we learn of parts of Shiloh's past that continue to haunt and affect him and, ultimately, all of them.

At times, though, it seems Tussing loses direction. You wonder how the trio manages to eke out an existence as long as they do, particularly given the few monetary resources they start with and only a couple minor very short-term jobs. A few characters come and go, seemingly serving as little more than vehicles by which to make or raise a particular point or issue. Thomas tells the story from a much later point in his life yet there is little to help us connect Vermont with later events mentioned in passing. Similarly, each chapter begins with two men who investigate alleged miracles for the Catholic Church. It is only near the end that we learn the connection between those vignettes and Thomas' story. Although intriguing on their own, their connection with the main story is tenuous enough that the concept comes off as an afterthought.

That does not mean the flaws overwhelm the enjoyment of the book. While they do keep The Best People in the World from being a superb first effort, it is well-written and engaging. It also leaves little doubt that Tussing is an author to watch.