The Good Life

Wry poignant and utterly believable these stories brim with rare insights and fresh descriptions. Recalling the work of Lorrie Moore and Jonathan Franzen The Good Life features characters battling daily demons of envy fear and disillusionment while somehow maintaining an abiding optimism one story an unhappy wife learns that her friends New-Agey husband is able to teach her a few things about joy. In Ax of the Apostles a frustrated priest secretly becomes a binge eater. In A Whole New Man a hippie fathers daughters sign him up for a makeover on television. Here are characters trying to weather the confounding people of the world ? the lucky in love the athletically gifted the chronically successful ? characters clinging to their cynicism while admitting that real hope and passion demand a suspension of skepticism.