The Greatest Possible Good: A Novel - Softcover

Brooks, Ben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1668089459 ISBN 13: 9781668089453

Verlag: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

“A sharp-witted tragicomedy about money, morality, and a family teetering on the brink. A splendidly funny novel.” —Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street

For readers of Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting and Jenny Jackson’s Pineapple Street, an irresistibly funny and incisive novel about a wealthy family that is confident in its good intentions—until the discovery that their patriarch has secretly given all their money to charity ruins their lives.

Meet the Candlewicks.

Seventeen-year-old Evangeline (a.k.a Dubbin), wants to change the world, has a penchant for throwing fake blood during protests, and despairs at the smug complacency of the rest of her family.

Emil is fifteen, and a painfully shy math prodigy who has just begun dabbling in narcotics.

Their mother, Yara, arrives at airports four hours early and fears that AI and climate change will leave her children unemployed and unable to go outside for longer than ten minutes.

And, Arthur, the father, a hapless and always neutral man, who can’t decide if he is a good person or a doormat—forgiving and understanding or weak and terrified.

Their comfortable lives are thrown into disarray when Arthur walks out into the woods one night for a stroll in his calfskin slippers only to fall down an abandoned mineshaft. Disoriented and unable to move, he remains there for three days with only a bottle of mid-range Bordeaux, his son’s confiscated stash of LSD, and his daughter’s book on the concept of Effective Altruism for company.

When he is rescued, he is a man transformed. Determined to give away all of his wealth and devote the rest of his life to the (statistically proven) most worthy causes, his metamorphosis shocks his family and triggers a chain of events that will have far-reaching and unforeseen consequences for them all.

Equal parts hilarious and achingly human, The Greatest Possible Good spans ten years in the lives of the Candlewicks, asking universal questions about what it means to live a good life and if there is a “right” way to be a good person, while introducing the world to one of the most memorable and dysfunctional families in contemporary literature.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ben Brooks is the author of books for children and adults, including The Greatest Possible Good and the million-copy series Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different, both a Sunday Times (London) and New York Times bestseller, which has been translated into twenty-eight languages and received a British National Book Award. He received a Somerset Maugham Award and Jerwood Fiction Prize for his debut novel Lolito, and the Celsius 232 and Premio Torres del Agua for The Impossible Boy. He also writes for television and is developing original TV projects in the UK and Germany.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1 1.
Around a lacquered oak dining table made from looted church pews, below a bulkhead lamp that had once belonged to a Polish fishing trawler, the four members of the Candlewick family were picking distractedly at clay plates of salad. The dish was a delicately improvised medley of charred root vegetables and crumbled feta, doused in manuka honey dressing and crawling with ant-black sesame seeds.

One side of the six-hundred-year-old room had been punched out and replaced with a triple-glazed wall of tinted glass, revealing a pale moon hung in the dimming pink sky. It was late April and the magnolia in the centre of the lawn waved its clenched buds like winning tickets. Beyond the back fence, lights flickered on in the leaded windows of neighbouring cottages.

At fifteen, Emil Candlewick was the youngest of the family and eating in sporadic bursts while listening to an AirPod lodged in his left ear. The clove of white plastic was relaying a conversation between two Canadian professors about Max Tegmark’s theory that the universe might be a mathematical structure—something Emil had come to believe was possible but not probable, and so painful to consider that it gave him migraines he once described on a physics forum as feeling “like absolute ass.”

Emil’s bloated, badger-bearded father, Arthur, was transfixed by the presence of a housefly that had settled on a framed photograph of his family, taken on a beach in the Maldives. In the photograph, the four Candlewicks are ankle-deep in rags of surf, spaced so far apart that they look like a band being shot for a magazine.

Below the table, Yara Candlewick’s thumb traced the heartbeats of a stock portfolio on the screen of her phone. The copper bracelet on her right wrist meant to subdue arthritis clinked intermittently against the rim of her plate as she ate with the other hand. A shaft of dusk light tethered her face to the vaulted glass ceiling.

Rounding out the ensemble, Yara’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Evangeline, was engrossed in a slim, red paperback, propped open behind her food. She read with the urgency of an actress searching for her own name in a bad review. Still chewing, she lifted her eyes from the page and aimed them at her father.

“Did you know that every year in the developing world, thousands of children lose their sight because they don’t have access to Vitamin A?”

“Very interesting, dubbin,” said Arthur, watching as the fly abandoned its post on the picture frame and crept across the richly veined marble-top of the console table.

“It’s not interesting,” said Evangeline. “It’s a tragedy.”

Arthur reluctantly switched his gaze from the fly to his daughter. “Something can be both tragic and interesting, I’d imagine. Look at the Titanic, or Macbeth.”

“Or MK Ultra,” said Emil, a narrow frond of lettuce flopped out of the corner of his mouth like a cigarette.

His father pointed a bone-handled knife at his son approvingly. “Exactly. The US government injecting prisoners with hallucinogenic drugs. What’s more interesting than that?”

“Literally everything,” said Evangeline.

“Sorry we’re not talking about dead babies,” said Emil.

“Emil,” said Yara, digital mountain ranges reflected in the mirror-coated lenses of her Prada sunglasses. “I’m warning you.”

Evangeline lifted the book again, trying to refocus the discussion. “I really think you should read this,” she told her father. “He explains this idea called ‘effective altruism.’ It means using mathematical models to work out how a donation can do the most good. One hundred pounds, for example, could either train one fiftieth of a guide dog in Britain, or save the sight of one thousand children through vitamin supplementation in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Arthur sighed. “That’s not quite how the world works, dubbin.”

“It’s how charity works,” pointed out Evangeline.

Yara re-entered the conversation without moving her eyes from the screen. “If we sent money to everyone who needed it, what would we have?”

Emil imagined himself saying “each other” and almost choked with laughter on a mouthful of salad. Evangeline frowned so deeply that three parallel waves appeared in her forehead.

The eating resumed for a full minute. One of the voices in Emil’s left ear wondered whether the fact that an unyielding David Hilbert had failed where Einstein succeeded was proof that pure mathematics would never be sufficient to explain physical reality. Evangeline read that easily reparable fistulas caused by lack of access to medical interventions during childbirth left women ostracised from their communities. Having lost track of the fly, Arthur began twisting in his seat to see whether it had taken up residence elsewhere in the minimally furnished, light-flooded kitchen-diner. Yara considered reallocating a portion of her Disney shares to an index-linked developing markets fund.

A spoon chimed against the lip of a bowl. Evangeline was finished.

“May I be excused?” she said.

Yara sighed and placed her phone facedown on the enviable patina of the table. She surveyed her family with the downcast air of someone turning up at a restaurant and realising they’ve been catfished. A nest of almonds and white cheese remained at the bottom of her daughter’s bowl. “You haven’t finished,” she said.

“I don’t feel like finishing,” said Evangeline. “I’m finding this atmosphere to be hostile.”

“I’m finding this atmosphere to be full of farts,” said Emil.

Yara gripped the stem of her wineglass like a pen. “Emil, that’s not clever and it’s not funny.”

In response, Emil mumbled something unintelligibly quiet. A private grin spread across his face and a chuckle bubbled up and stalled in his throat.

“What did you just say?” said his mother.

“Nothing,” said Emil, hastily tidying away his smile. “Can I go too?”

“No, you cannot.” Yara tipped her head toward Evangeline. “Evie, you can get down from the table. Emil, you’re staying here. Your father and I have a bone to pick with you.”

On hearing this, Evangeline’s desire to leave rapidly evaporated. “Why?” she said. “What did he do?”

Emil drew his face down into his shoulders like a turtle.

“That’s none of your business,” said Yara. “Do you want to get down or not?”

“I’ll find out anyway.”

“She has a point,” said Arthur.

“No, she doesn’t,” said Emil.

Evangeline leant toward her brother conspiratorially. “Did you get caught planning to shoot up school?” she whispered.

“If I did,” whispered Emil, “I’d start with you.”

“Emil!” said Yara, her voice managing to spread and linger like a pungent gas occupying the sixty-square-metre room. The outburst provoked a period of silence in which the only movement came from Arthur, straining his neck to try and discern whether the fly was now examining the base of a Yankee Candle, or he was waiting for a stray coffee bean to take flight.

Through gritted teeth, Yara said, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry, poppet,” said Arthur. “There was a fly.”
...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1668089459
• ISBN 13: 9781668089453
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar