Customer Reviews

The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done

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Here is another book read in my project of reading first novels. I always make it a point to read a few first novels every year. Rarely do you find a gem but often you find writers with real talent that you hope will grow. Newman is a talent.

I have some problems with this novel; mainly, I'm not into clever technique nearly as much as I'm into a really well written story. I could have done without the variations in prose and shifting plot threads. On the other hand, Newman creates some very compelling characters in Chrysalis, Ralph and Denise. And the story, once you've pieced it together in your mind, has some very interesting aspects though her use of coincidence and relationship is not on the level of Dickens.

Still, this is a novel that moves along nicely and is easy to read. In a situation like this, I'm more anxious to see what Newman comes up with next as opposed to reading this novel again. But that doesn't mean this novel isn't worth a look.

The author uses numbered and lettered lists and odd formatting that I expected to find annoying after a while, but the effect does not feel contrived or `writerly'. It's poetic, clever, funny, and tragic. The characters are, to put it simplistically, all deeply messed up by a lack of love and by their experiences of loss and abandonment. They are, therefore, all doomed. In the meantime, they live twisted and fascinating lives. This is a tremendously creative and enjoyable book, which I recommend highly.

I really enojyed this book. The format is unusual but I felt is was a good way to deal with elements in the past present and future and incorporate different viewpoints as narrator. Mostly I liked it because the character are fleshed out in such idiosyncratic detail. I began to see a lot of myself in the central character and by the end of the book I felt like I wouldn't want to recommend it to a friend because they'd learn too much about *me*. If you are sarcastic and like dark humor it is a book for you.

A depressed, anorexic narrator, pulled from near-catatonic grief (her mother has died) in a crumbling California mansion by her manic, amoral brother and his false-guru friend, Ralph, embarks on a savage, hilarious, mind-bending voyage of self-discovery in this ambitious, tightly constructed first novel.

Though the brief chapters - presented in jumpy, sometimes contradictory, narrative scenes, lists, reports, even poems - seem at first too experimental, too affected, it's worth sticking it out. Patterns soon begin to emerge and a story - well, several stories - gathers momentum.

The narrator, Chrysallis, is a Peruvian Indian who was adopted as a baby by her CIA father when he found her crying outside a massacred village. Or so she's been told, anyway. She has no memory of her infant life, and her adoptive father is long dead in a far-away place.

Chrysallis is the more familial of the siblings - Eddie did not even show up for his mother's cremation, while Chrysallis organized the funeral. "Because she had nothing suitable, I lent Mom the dress in which she was cremated."

But it's Eddie who inherited and he has brought Ralph as the star attraction in the Tibetan School of Miracles, a moneymaking scheme to gull the gullible. Ralph - not his real name - a "trailer trash" potter with a gift for physical stillness and tough love, met Eddie under coincidental circumstances, but greater coincidences are in store. It turns out Ralph is the brother of Eddie's one true love, a professional blackjack player. Who somehow knew Eddie and Chrysallis' father.

It gets a little confusing, keeping track of all these relationships and parents and stepparents, but as the story unfolds the connections make sense and assume an inevitability that fits perfectly with Chrysallis' blossoming understanding.

This is a daring debut, neatly constructed, moving from the fragmentary to the whole, reflecting the narrator's growth, until the girl and her story are so grounded that a conventional ending becomes permissible. A buoyant story, despite its tragedies.

The story is all twisted around and filled with unlikely coincidences, but the format is highly entertaining and very original. It was like reading a book of sound bites - but it kept the story interesting. I didn't exactly love the characters with all their faults (and they have many) I had to keep reading to hold out the hope that they would get their lives together. Be prepared for this book to deal in a light (rather offensive) way with cancer, death, spirituality, mental illness, drugs, and more. It was an interesting book for more than just the story which is made to sound funny from the editorial review and the book jacket. It has it's funny moments but they are not representative of the book on whole.

If funny and f*k'd up is your thing, you'll love it . . .

Sandra Newman's first book shows that she might be an amazing new voice in writing. Her writing defies genre in a way similar to Kurt Vonnegut (to whom she has been compared), being neither murder, mystery, romance, or thriller. Newman's novel deals with character development. The Only Good Thing... is like a gripping fictional biography.

The main character is Chrysalis Moffat, a woman who has found herself in a very large mansion left to her by her two dead parents. She is joined by her brother, Eddie - who shows himself as chronically unstable and incestuous - and Ralph, another chronically unstable friend of Eddie who has a vast mysterious tie to Chrysalis' family history. Together they found a Tibetan Meditation School in the mansion to sap money from rich people. The true focus of the novel, however, is the unraveling of Chrysalis' family history and strange relationship with Ralph as they come to realize her family's secret past in biological warfare and her father's ties to the CIA.

As if the story weren't intriguing enough, Newman writes in a very refreshing, new voice. Large portions of the book are written out as numbered lists or small sections under headings such as "The Last Kitchen Scene" or "Concrete Detail". Although the narrative jumps around a bit and can be a bit hard to follow, the vast tapestry Newman has woven is not that hard and very worth following.

I'd suggest Newman's book to anyone looking for a fresh new author or a healthy, thoughtful change of pace from the cheap thriller or romance.