Self-preservation is a blood sport for Kirsten King's protagonist in A Good Person, a dark satire with cosmic twists about a young woman's quest to find love at any cost. King's contemporary debut catapults readers into the "neurotic" psyche of one of modern literature's most audacious narcissists and follows her through a series of mishaps that land her in the middle of a murder investigation.
In her late 20s, Boston marketing associate Lillian is eager to settle down. She finds friendship challenging, thanks to her self-absorption and inability to tell the truth. She mercilessly manipulates her one friend, Jamie. The other person in her life is Henry, the finance guy she is sleeping with and who, by an enormous stretch of the imagination, she is convinced is her boyfriend. It's fine that he can meet only on weeknights and it's always for sex. At least they are adventurous in bed, Lillian thinks; her inner monologues during their amorous exploits are laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Despite her "false confidence," Lillian is deeply vulnerable. Henry is "a man who didn't always hear you when you said the word 'no,' " and it is here that King superbly contrasts Lillian's perceived reality colored by desperation from the reader's comprehension of it. Delving into her inner life, A Good Person ponders the perils of loneliness and exclusion for someone always on the "outside, looking in."
When Henry suddenly dumps her, a furious Lillian enlists Jamie's help to put a TikTok-generated hex on him. Shockingly, calamity strikes Henry later that night. Lillian eagerly embraces the role of mourning girlfriend but is enraged to discover that position already occupied by Henry's actual, live-in girlfriend, Nora. Nora's the one getting all the sympathy and attention Lillian covets. To worsen matters, Lillian is wanted for questioning by the police, and hers isn't an airtight alibi. Not prone to self-reflection, she briefly wonders whether she has the ability "to make darker things come true," before concluding that only by solving the mystery of Henry's death can she establish her own innocence.
A screenwriter, King artfully spins a story that straddles pure comedy--particularly the dialogue between her protagonist and her equally self-absorbed mother--and the horror genre. Lillian, one realizes with mounting dread, has the makings of a true sociopath. Encountering multiple thrilling plot turns that throw Lillian's world into disarray, A Good Person accelerates toward a brilliant finale as appalling as it is inevitable. --Shahina Piyarali
Shelf Talker: This artfully written dark satire is set in contemporary Boston and follows one of modern literature's most audacious narcissists in her quest to find love at any cost.