The Greatest Possible Good Audiobook By Ben Brooks cover art

The Greatest Possible Good

A Novel

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The Greatest Possible Good

By: Ben Brooks
Narrated by: Emma Gregory
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“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. Dark Humor Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Money Funny
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Everyone who raise children may have gone through one of those phases that this family went through. The story is Well written that you go through the different emotions that accompany the different characters. Everyone will relate to at least one character in the story.

Great story

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Reading about the lives of eccentric or quirky people is a delight. I enjoyed Emil and his calm demeanor in the face of hardship or tragedy. Evangeline was unruffled by her parents and she became a very good mother to the next in line and I was sad not to be able to continue with Friday. She is a smart and very appealing person.

The readers were so different and in-character always. I adore accents from the UK always but these were exceptional.

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