| Title | : | The Best Thing for You |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0771053975 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780771053979 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 336 |
| Publication | : | First published March 16, 2004 |
| Awards | : | Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (2005) |
Here, in three novellas, Lyon reveals the potential for darkness that lurks behind even the most perfect-seeming veneer. In the first novella, “No Fun,” a middle-class family in present-day Vancouver is thrown into turmoil when their teenage son is charged in connection with the beating of a disabled man. In “The Goldberg Metronome,” a young couple discovers an antique metronome taped up and hidden under a sink in their new apartment. Its dark past weaves a story that crosses centuries and continents. Then, in the stunning title novella, a riveting and layered film-noirish piece set in wartime 1940s Vancouver, a housewife in her twenties plots and carries out her husband’s murder with sang-froid, with the help of her lover, a young grocery-store clerk. Later, the son of the insurance agent who loses his job over the woman’s claim must deal with his family’s financial downfall as he nurses his own obsession with her crime and its connection to the music in his head.
Lyon draws us in with her vivid characters and sharp, highly charged prose and holds us in the worlds she creates. Along the way, she challenges the fragile illusion of goodness in our lives. Once again Annabel Lyon has demonstrated herself to be one of Canada’s boldest, most exciting new voices.
The Best Thing for You Reviews
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In this follow-up to her highly-acclaimed collection of short stories, Oxygen, each of Annabel Lyon's three novellas is entirely different from one another, but all three are well-crafted, delving deeply into characterization and plot.
My personal favourite is the title novella, which I believe has the potential to be expanded into a novel.
And now Lyon has made that next step with her novel The Golden Mean, to be released August 25, 2009. Can't wait to read it! -
It's been a few years since I read this, but the first novella knocked me right off my feet. It chronicles the struggles of a couple who have to come to terms with the fact that their son has been involved in a beating of a man with Down syndrome. It's very powerful and well written. I know I enjoyed the other two stories, but this first one never left me.
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I read this book with great anticipation, after having thoroughly enjoyed "The Golden Mean". Three novellas, "No Fun", "The Goldberg Metronome" and "The Best Thing for You". Three very different stories, and different literary techniques. "No Fun" reminded me a lot of "We have to talk about Kevin" - which came first, I wonder. "The Goldberg Metronome" reminded me a lot of "Cloud Atlas" - which came first, I wonder. The title story did not feel complete; too elliptical - it didn't add up, for me.
I feel like Lyon is testing her technical writing abilities, stretching them. She is a virtuouso at the techniques of dialogue and time-warps; but these stories are less commercially developed than "The Golden Mean" which, I think, was probably written later.
She is coming into her own, developing from esoteric literary excellence to becoming a more commercial accessible storyteller. I will read anything she writes ... -
A game of thirds: (1) an opening story of contemporary concerns & youth troubles that is compelling and convincing; (2) an historical tale that irritated me when its fragmentary structure distracted from its engrossing, top flight moments; (3) a closing story that failed to grab me at the outset, and one in which I completely lost interest before the end. This book's star rating is down the middle by default.
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This is a complication of three novellas. I read the first and it was merely ok. Started the second and it was similarly mediocre so I didn’t bother finishing the book. Disappointed.
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Annabel Lyon explores the quiet dissolution of the delicate, sometimes illusory, bonds connecting lovers or preserving families in the face of legal persecution and other public trials. The Best Thing for You is a collection of three novellas focused on the erosion of trust in intimate relationships, most often set within the context of criminal investigation or legal suspicion. Like a line of dominoes, an initial, volatile event causes these characters to scatter with no chance of returning to the safe facade of their former lives.
The immediate favourite of the set is Lyon's second novella, The Goldberg Metronome, an ambitious work involving the dark history of a metronome passed from the hands of a European Jewish family in the 1930s, to a lower-middle-class Germanic girl, and then to a present-day couple in Vancouver. Lyon also shines with her titular third novella, the murder-ballad of a young, adulterous woman and her boyish lover in WWII-era Canada.
Ideal for: "Mystery-lite" readers; Folks who take a shine to historical fiction; New writers learning the craft and wanting to see a successful, experimental novella collection. -
This collection of novellas, set in Vancouver, concerns three very different sets of people (a post-punk yuppie couple grappling with their teenage son being accused of assault of a disabled man; a couple who discover a hidden treasure in their new apartment, and its troubled history; a young wife who conspires with a teenage delivery boy to kill her husband in a 40s-set noir, and the effects of that conspiracy on others) all of whom are grappling in some way with finding themselves in a new place in the social structure, and trying to hang on for dear life. The prose is very sharp, and the interior lives of the characters come to life as they go about their daily business -- working, shopping, going to school. Definitely want to read more from Annabel Lyon.
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The second novella, "The Goldberg Metronome," would make an excellent one-set play--all four of the intertwining stories take place in suites of rooms, mostly apartments, and there's never more than four characters in a scene. Plus, Nazis and the West End: what's not theatrical about that?
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To quote my sister: "Bleak and depressing, everything I want in Canadian fiction".
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Incredibly haunting stories. Can't get them out of my head.
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Three long short stories, all three of which really stayed with me. Loved them all, but the title story is just amazing.
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great writing
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Exceptional and interesting collection of longer short stories/novellas. Particularly loved the first story "No Fun".
