Be Good — Stacey May Fowles

Be Good is based on the notion that a narrative must be completely broken apart, fragmented, perhaps even destroyed, and then reassembled in a new shattered state to truly reveal relevant meaning. The novel interweaves competing accounts in the first person of the same series of events: love affairs, failed relationships, obsessions, and moving from familiarity. The faulty nature of memory and recollection are revealed as each voice speaks only from personal experience and therefore ultimately contradicts the other. The experiences of these twenty something characters are often their first taste of departure from the familiar, from home, revealing their ongoing alienation and isolation where the only reliable narrator is the future.