Review: The Greatest Possible Good by Ben Brooks

The Greatest Possible Good by Ben Brooks

Blurb from Goodreads:

Arthur Candlewick spends three days in a disused mine shaft with only his son’s drug stash, a book on the concept of ‘effective altruism’ and a bottle of medium-priced Bordeaux for company. When Arthur emerges, he has decided to sell the family timber business and give away his wealth to charity. His family think he has lost his mind.

His university-bound daughter, Evangeline, wants to change the world but perhaps not at the cost of her own privileged life. His son, Emil, good at maths and not much else, becomes more distant than ever. And his wife, Yara, just wants the doctor to run another brain scan on her husband.

 A book hasn't depressed me like this one did in a long time... it was just so sad.  It was not just a dysfunctional family but four very messed up people adrift and not depending on or confiding in one another. And then the father decides to give away his money and everyone treats him like a leper.  Hope you have better luck!

The Greatest Possible Good comes out next week on July 15, 2025 and you can purchase HERE.  

Around a lacquered oak dining table made from looted church pews, below a bulkhead lamp that had once belonged to a Polish fishing trawler, the four members of the Candlewick family were picking distractedly at clay plates of salad. The dish was a delicately improvised medley of charred root vegetables and crumbled feta, doused in manuka honey dressing and crawling with ant-black sesame seeds.

 

One side of the six-hundred-year-old room had been punched out and replaced with a triple-glazed wall of tinted glass, revealing a pale moon hung in the dimming pink sky. It was late April and the magnolia in the centre of the lawn waved its clenched buds like winning tickets. Beyond the back fence, lights flickered on in the leaded windows of neighbouring cottages.