The Good Guy: A deeply compelling novel about love and marriage set in 1960s suburban America - Softcover

Beale, Susan

3.79

413 ratings by Goodreads

9781473630345: The Good Guy: A deeply compelling novel about love and marriage set in 1960s suburban America

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1473630347 ISBN 13: 9781473630345

Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2016

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2016

A deeply compelling novel with a Mad Men feel to it set in 1960s suburban America. For fans of The Engagements and Tigers in Red Weather.

Ted, a car-tyre salesman in 1960s suburban New England, is a dreamer who craves admiration. His wife, Abigail, longs for a life of the mind. Single-girl Penny just wants to be loved. When a chance encounter brings Ted and Penny together, he becomes enamoured and begins inventing a whole new life with her at its centre. But when this fantasy collides with reality, the fallout threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear.

The Good Guy is a deeply compelling debut about love, marriage and what happens when good intentions and self-deception are taken to extremes.

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Review:

A joy (Samantha Harvey, author of The Wilderness)

Inspired by the author's own experience, The Good Guy is a story of marriage, self-deception and the pressure to conform in Sixties suburban New England (i)

A delicious, slightly gossipy summer read with a Mad Men feel to it. I'd especially recommend this to readers who enjoyed The Longest Night by Andria Williams and Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann (Bookbag)

There's definitely a Mad Men vibe to The Good Guy (Red, Best Books to Read this June)

Fresh and lively (Daily Mail)

Beale has crafted an engaging and harrowing portrait of womanhood and domestic life, astutely exploring the many ways in which distance and proximity can co-exist (Times Literary Supplement)

Extremely well-written, intelligent and perceptive, this also happens to be a novel that slips down like ice-cream on a hot day. I absolutely loved it (Shiny New Books)

What makes Beale's writing so poignant is her ability to paint her characters with such acute attention to detail (Dundee University Review of the Arts)

The Good Guy is a very strong debut and a novel that kept me gripped to the very end. Beale is exceptional at creating believable characters that evoke genuine sympathy and scorn in equal measure (Book and Brew)

The Good Guy is no honeyed exercise in nostalgia: it's an exploration of the deception and conformity at the heart of the American dream (Guardian Online)

Book Description:

A brilliant first novel about love, marriage and self-deception

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