THE BEST OF GOOD
By Sara Lewis: Atria Books, 2003, 279 pagesRooting for the good guy is often part of the fun of reading a novel or watching a movie. In the case of Sara Lewis’s The Best of Good, readers literally get to root for the Good guy.
From the point of view of everyone who knows him, except perhaps his sister, Tom Good is a middle-aged has-been living a humdrum, dead-end life. As a teenager, he founded a band, Point Blank, which went on to lasting popularity, and wrote several of their hit songs. But just when the band was taking off, he walked away from it all.
Now, 20 years later, he makes his money as a bartender and off royalties, and lives in a small apartment. Good, as he’s known by all, is secure in his routine, and spends hours writing and recording songs in a closet he’s turned into a soundproof studio. Then one day he finds his world shaken and stirred when he hears that an old girlfriend is a single mother to a 10-year-old boy who looks just like him.
Good makes contact with Diana — who’d left him 11 years before after asking him why he couldn’t be “more normal” — and decides he’s going to have to start looking and acting the part of a father. Readers can’t help but cheer him on as he slowly begins changing his routines and expanding his horizons, starting with buying real coffee instead of instant and shopping for clothes that don’t come in a plastic package of three or five at Kmart.
Little bits of his background pop up as he makes a transformation into a real adult. We learn about the traumatic experiences that led him to create his band and then leave it; we see how his personality was shaped and how it has been in hibernation for a long, long time. Watching Good blossom is delightful and heartening.
Lewis spins an absorbing, poignant, but light-hearted tale of late blooming, of finding new life and hope. Humor and tragedy mix naturally in her writing, reflecting its fidelity to real life.
On one occasion in which Tom encounters an unexpected situation (an occurrence that becomes more and more common as he emerges from his shell), he feels that “inside me, a family of cornered squirrels scrambled, frantically scratching and clawing to get free.” Readers may smile as they recognize the feeling.
The Best of Good shows it’s never too late to start afresh, to live and love. Lewis’s loving tenderness for her characters brings them alive, allowing them to tease out universal feelings all readers have experienced, and to encourage them even as they are entertained.
Cathy Carmode Lim has been a copy editor at several West coast newspapers and currently works at home as a freelance writer and mother of three girls.
