How to Be Good

Literary novel about modern marriage and morality

Trade Paperback

1st

First Person

Fiction

336

15

2018-06-26 18:29:47

How to Be Good is a comic literary novel about Katie Carr, a London doctor who has always thought of herself as a basically good person: she works for the National Health Service, worries about global poverty and homelessness, and tries to raise her two young children with a social conscience. Her husband David, a failed music critic and self-styled ”Angriest Man in Holloway,” has long been cynical, bitter, and difficult to live with. Just as Katie begins an affair, convinced she has morally earned some happiness, David undergoes a startling spiritual conversion after meeting a New Age healer called DJ GoodNews. He becomes radically, aggressively good—giving away money, inviting the homeless to live in spare rooms, and pushing the family toward extreme acts of charity and moral consistency. As David’s newfound goodness destabilizes their marriage and family life, Katie is forced to confront her own hypocrisies, resentments, and confused ideas about what it actually means to be a good person, spouse, and parent. Blending sharp social observation with dark humor, the novel explores modern liberal guilt, marital strain, faith, and the gap between moral ideals and everyday behavior.

Riverhead Books

9781573229326

United States

2002-04-30

2002

2001

46393465

1

English

New York

~$14.99

2026-03-03

2018-06-26 18:29:47