Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2016
192 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness," claims Samuel Beckett. To this, we add: nothing is funnier than unhappiness with a heavy dose of amorality, as we learn from Robert Lopez's unforgettable Good People.
In these twenty stories, a motley cast of obsessive, self-deluded outsiders narrate their darker moments, which include kidnapping, voyeurism, and psychic masochism. As their struggles give way to the black humor of life's unreason, the bleak merges with the oddly poetic, in a style as lean and resolute as Carver or Hemingway.
Treading the fine line between confession and self-justification, the absurd violence of threatened masculinity, and the perverse joy of neurosis, Lopez's stories reveal the compulsive suffering at the precarious core of our universal humanity.
"Starred Review. Depressing, inventive, and marvelous - a thought-provoking path to feeling awful." - Kirkus
"Personalities ranging from the amusingly neurotic to the borderline psychotic shape the 20 quirky stories in this collection... Lopez shows uncommon skill at evoking both laughs and shudders, sometimes in the same story." - Publishers Weekly
"A dizzying, disturbing tour of what might be going on in the minds of 'good people.' ... Those who enjoy dark humor with a dose of sado-masochistic sexual fantasy will take pleasure in [Lopez's] spare prose and ability to spear a thought on first strike." - Foreword Reviews
"Dark humor finds its way into these confessional stories and throughout the collection, the diverse voices ring true. Lopez has said music played a big part in his experience growing up, and it's apparent in Good People that his writing has found its rhythm." - Raleigh Review
"Robert Lopez is the master of deadpan dread, of the elliptical koan, of the sudden turn of language that reveals life to be so wonderfully absurd. Always with Lopez, the voice is all his - enchanting, surprising, at times devastating." - Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
"Robert Lopez's strange, incantatory, visionary stories reveal the mysteries behind the ordinary world. You lift your head from this book and it's as if a third eye has been opened." - Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake
This information about Good People was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, and the story collection Asunder. He lives in Brooklyn.
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