What do you think?
The GoodLife
Inspired by a true event, a harrowing chronicle of a kidnapping gone terribly wrong follows a husband and wife, obsessed with material success and achievement of a distorted American Dream, from five different viewpoints over three grim days. A first novel. 12,500 first printing.
- GenresFiction
263 pages, Hardcover
First published October 11, 1999
About the author
Keith Scribner
5 books49 followersKeith Scribner’s fourth novel, Old Newgate Road, will be released by Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House) on January 8, 2019. His three previous novels are The Oregon Experiment, Miracle Girl, and The GoodLife, which was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Daily Beast, TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, Quarterly West, The North Atlantic Review, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun, and the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton) and Sudden Stories: The MAMMOTH Book of Miniscule Fiction. He received both Pushcart and O’Henry Prize Honorable Mentions for his short story, “Paradise in a Cup” (TriQuarterly, #121).
Scribner received his BA from Vassar College and MFA from the University of Montana. He was awarded Wallace Stegner and John L’Heureux Fellowships in Fiction at Stanford University, where he went on to teach in the Creative Writing Program as a Jones Lecturer. He currently lives in Oregon with his wife, the poet Jennifer Richter, and their children. He teaches in Oregon State University’s MFA program.
His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Daily Beast, TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, Quarterly West, The North Atlantic Review, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun, and the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton) and Sudden Stories: The MAMMOTH Book of Miniscule Fiction. He received both Pushcart and O’Henry Prize Honorable Mentions for his short story, “Paradise in a Cup” (TriQuarterly, #121).
Scribner received his BA from Vassar College and MFA from the University of Montana. He was awarded Wallace Stegner and John L’Heureux Fellowships in Fiction at Stanford University, where he went on to teach in the Creative Writing Program as a Jones Lecturer. He currently lives in Oregon with his wife, the poet Jennifer Richter, and their children. He teaches in Oregon State University’s MFA program.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 10, 2009
Creepy yet compelling. You feel sympathy for the characters at the same time you recoil at their greed and other flaws. Like the movie A Simple Plan, the planned crime unravels and destroys everyone around it.
September 2, 2023
Nobody comes out looking good in this one. Certainly not the kidnappers -- clueless, self-absorbed scam artists with minds pickled by fancified visions of the non-existent American Dream -- and surprisingly, not the victim and his wife either.
With regard to the latter, I wonder what the real life family of Stona Brown (the Reso family of Hillside, NJ) made of the unsympathetic portrayals of Stona and Nunny Brown here. It seems like Scribner took some liberties with their characters, given that this story is, as my Riverhead paperback edition assures me, BASED ON A TRUE STORY in all caps.
At any rate, I read this book when it came out in 1999 and was impressed by Scribner's deft prose, his nuanced characterizations of all the central players (including Theo's painfully self-deluded dad Malcolm), and the way he dispenses information in a kind of gradual drip of increasing dread and horror.
There are no thrills here; the plan fecklessly conceived by boneheaded Theo has absolutely no chance of succeeding. (The fact that he demands $18.5 million in unmarked $20 bills, a cash haul that would fill a tractor trailer, is just one of his comical miscalculations. In reality, the kidnappers demanded $100 bills, still a colossal amount of paper.) The dramatic arc here is watching the kidnappers arduously justify their increasingly depraved actions every step of the way, right to the inevitable end. Re-reading it this year, I find it still holds up. I buzzed right through it, just as I did almost 25 years ago.
Oh, and I see that Irene "Jackie" Seale, the real-life counterpart of Colleen here, was released from prison in November of 2009. So, a happy end for one person in this sordid tale.
With regard to the latter, I wonder what the real life family of Stona Brown (the Reso family of Hillside, NJ) made of the unsympathetic portrayals of Stona and Nunny Brown here. It seems like Scribner took some liberties with their characters, given that this story is, as my Riverhead paperback edition assures me, BASED ON A TRUE STORY in all caps.
At any rate, I read this book when it came out in 1999 and was impressed by Scribner's deft prose, his nuanced characterizations of all the central players (including Theo's painfully self-deluded dad Malcolm), and the way he dispenses information in a kind of gradual drip of increasing dread and horror.
There are no thrills here; the plan fecklessly conceived by boneheaded Theo has absolutely no chance of succeeding. (The fact that he demands $18.5 million in unmarked $20 bills, a cash haul that would fill a tractor trailer, is just one of his comical miscalculations. In reality, the kidnappers demanded $100 bills, still a colossal amount of paper.) The dramatic arc here is watching the kidnappers arduously justify their increasingly depraved actions every step of the way, right to the inevitable end. Re-reading it this year, I find it still holds up. I buzzed right through it, just as I did almost 25 years ago.
Oh, and I see that Irene "Jackie" Seale, the real-life counterpart of Colleen here, was released from prison in November of 2009. So, a happy end for one person in this sordid tale.
March 20, 2018
Interesting, you see the perspectives on kidnapping, greed, and accidental from the perspectives of the victim, preps, and the victim's family.
Very much a downer of an ending in my opinion, through.
Very much a downer of an ending in my opinion, through.
August 17, 2011
After months of reading mainly self-help books, I needed a good summer book. Something not too heavy, but well written. Something engaging, with characters I could believe. In short, an escape.
Keith Scribner's "The Good Life" delivered on all counts. Each character has a unique and convincing voice. These are your classic "Stupid Criminals" in a story based on a real kidnapping. In addition to the laughs, there is pathos. But Scribner gives us more; he is a talented novelist whose prose is rich and wonderful without seeming "writerly."
I look forward to reading his latest novel, "The Oregon Experiment."
Keith Scribner's "The Good Life" delivered on all counts. Each character has a unique and convincing voice. These are your classic "Stupid Criminals" in a story based on a real kidnapping. In addition to the laughs, there is pathos. But Scribner gives us more; he is a talented novelist whose prose is rich and wonderful without seeming "writerly."
I look forward to reading his latest novel, "The Oregon Experiment."
December 25, 2011
read on k block. not very believable but it's based on a true story so that just shows that some criminals act unbelievably stupid.
February 24, 2012
I will be happy to read another book by Keith Scribner-he is a very skilled writer-but I had a hard time sleeping every night after I closed the book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews