Good Kids
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The critically acclaimed author of American Nerd makes his fiction debut with this romantic tragicomedy about a teenage boy and girl who discover his dad is having an affair with her mom. For readers of Chad Harbach and Jennifer Egan, and fans of filmmakers like Noah Baumbach.
At fifteen, Josh Paquette and Khadijah Silverglate-Dunn catch Josh’s father and Khad ijah’s mother kissing in a natural foods store. As both of their families fall apart, the teenagers sign a pact never to cheat on anyone, ever. They have no problem keeping the vow—until they meet again at twentyeight, both struggling with career and identit y, and both engaged to other people.
Acclaimed author Benjamin Nugent’s fiction debut is a hilarious, sad, handsomely plotted story of love and class. Stylistically adventurous but always accessible, Nugent trains a keen ear on the vernaculars of Generation Y and the baby boomers, as the young and middle-aged try to decide what parenting, background, and loyalty mean in an America struggling to redefine virtue.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Josh and Khadijah are growing up in a Massachusetts town populated by academics and ex-hippies and white people who named their daughters Khadijah during their Sufi phase, in Nugent's unimpressive debut novel (after American Nerd, a memoir). Though they attend the same high school, what links the two is the discovery that their parents are having an affair; when both their parents' marriages break up, Khadijah moves away before Josh can pursue his crush on her. The story starts there, then flashes forward a decade, to Los Angeles, where Josh is trying to figure out what to do now that his semisuccessful band has broken up. He has a fianc e, Julie, on whom, following the dictates of the vow he and Khadijah took when they were 15, he's never cheated. Then Khadijah comes to town. It's not a bad setup, and the book, with a fine, rooted sense of place, has charm and humor, just not enough. Josh and Julie communicate in self-aware banter ("now we could perform for each other without worrying if the performance was original," Josh says); Josh's mother and sister feel like pat Eastern liberals, complete with Buddhism, do-gooder jobs, Jungian psychology, and discussions of male privilege; his father is a set of irksome quirks, and the eventual playing out of his relationship with Khadijah makes sense, but fails to surprise.
