HOW TO BE GOOD, by Nick Hornby

How to Be Good is a clever comedy by British writer Nick Hornby. It works well as social satire and also explores the ethical question of what it means to be a good person and do good. Hornby skillfully narrates the story from the perspective of the wife of a dysfunctional couple. Her husband, a cynical "rant-author" with a column in the newspaper, is callous, rude, satirical and self-centered. The wife is a hardworking, frustrated doctor. She is also not exactly a saint, as she is having an affair out of desperation. She decides to divorce as the novel opens. When the husband comes into contact with a kind of new-age healer-type figure (who seems not to fit our stereotype of that sort), he undergoes a personality change and becomes obsessed with "doing good" with schemes like giving away the family's "excessive" material perspectives and having the neighbors house homeless runaway teens. The wife finds that she is even less satisfied with the "new" husband and struggles to understand the concept of being good. It's a frequently funny story with deeper meaning.

For a review of the book from NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/07/01/reviews/010701.01queenat.html