The Good Goodbye
Carla Buckley, 2016
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553390582
Summary
Two families come to terms with a devastating tragedy.
Arden and Rory Falcone have always considered themselves more like sisters than cousins, even opting to room together when they leave for the same college.
A few weeks into their first semester, Arden’s mother, Natalie, receives a devastating phone call: a fire has destroyed the girls’ dorm room, killing Rory’s boyfriend, Hunter, and leaving both girls in critical condition.
As Rory and Arden fight for survival, their stories unfold, and secrets emerge about the cousins’ relationships with their families, their peers, Hunter, and, of course, each other. But the secret of how the fire started is the one weighing most heavily on Natalie, and with the police and media asking relentless questions, she begins to doubt everything she knew about her own daughter and niece.
Told variously from the first-person viewpoints of Natalie, Arden, and Rory, each chapter reveals a tantalizing new detail that further complicates the cousins’ bond. The three narrative voices are nearly identical, and the climactic twist feels a bit forced, but Buckley’s characters are well-developed and interesting. (From .)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Washinton, D.C., USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College; M.B.A., University of Pennsylvania
• Currently—lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Carla Buckley is the author of The Good Goodbye (2016), The Deepest Secret (2014), Invisible (2012), and The Things That Keep Us Here (2010), which was nominated for a Thriller Award as a best first novel and the Ohioana Book Award for fiction.
She is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Wharton School of Business. Before turning to fiction, Buckley worked as an assistant press secretary for a U.S. senator, an analyst with the Smithsonian Institution, and a technical writer for a defense contractor.
She now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband and three children. She is almost always at work on her next novel. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Mainstream online reviews are not yet available for this book. Instead, we've included author blurbs. Head to Amazon to read helpful customer reviews.)
Twisty and beguiling, Carla Buckley’s The Good Goodbye shudders with revelations from its first pages. As suspense, it ensnares you, and as an emotionally rich novel about the formidable and fraught bonds of family, it will have you holding your breath until its final, moving paragraphs.
Megan Abbott, author of The Fever
Carla Buckley has a way of writing about a family in crisis that touches on our worst fears, and an uncanny ability to create characters who are so real it’s as though they are pulling you into their living room. Evocative and poignant, this story will curl around you like a glowing flame and suck the air out of your lungs with its power.
Chevy Stevens, author of Those Girls
Cousins as close as sisters, a mysterious fire, a tangled web of lies: It all adds up to a fluid, suspenseful story that keeps you turning the pages to find out what happened—and what will happen next. I devoured this novel.
Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
A tender portrait of an ordinary family torn by rivalry and disaster.... By turns touching and sinister, The Good Goodbye calls to mind Robert Frost’s definition of tragedy: something terrible happens and nobody’s to blame—though in Carla Buckley’s sure hands, nobody’s entirely innocent, either. A rich and satisfying family drama.
William Landay, author of Defending Jacob
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.)
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they more one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you, the reader, begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good suspense writers are skillful at hiding clues in plain sight. How well does the author hide the clues in this work?
4. Does the author use red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray?
5. Talk about plot's twists & turns—those surprising developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense? Are they plausible? Or do the twists & turns feel forced and preposterous—inserted only to extend the story.
6. Does the author ratchet up the story's suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? How does the author build suspense?
7. What about the ending—is it satisfying? Is it probable or believable? Does it grow out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 2). Or does the ending come out of the blue? Does it feel forced...tacked-on...or a cop-out? Or perhaps it's too predictable. Can you envision a better, or different, ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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