The Best People in the World: A Novel

by Justin Tussing

In Paducah, Kentucky, high floodwalls confine the current of the mighty Ohio, and for seventeen-year-old Thomas, the small town he has known all his life is full of limits that have left him feeling as reined in as the river. Things only get worse when his father pulls a few strings to get him a summer job as a subsystems technician at Western Kentucky State Power, and he is given an uninspiring view of what his future may hold. But the boundaries all disappear when Thomas falls for his new history teacher, Alice, a woman eight years his senior who becomes his first love, and when he meets the town misfit, Shiloh, a vagabond and anarchist who becomes his new role model. With pasts and futures they long to be free of, this unlikely trio flees for rural Vermont, where they live in seclusion, a society of three with no commitments and no rules. Their adventures in freedom and in intimacy come at a price, however, as they discover that a life apart from the world does not ensure a life apart from the past—and for one of them, the past that emerges will threaten tragedy. With its singular blend of harrowing mystery and subtle humor, The Best People in the World introduces an unusual and compelling new voice. Justin Tussing has written an unforgettable novel about love, redemption, and coming-of-age that masterfully illuminates a moment when everything was perfect—and then, when it wasn't.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

352 pages, Hardcover

First published February 7, 2006

Reviews

[Tory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the affective story, written in a well representative almost bleak style, of seventeen year old Thomas Mahey. Thomas is from a small, blue-collar town in Kentucky, a place that is kept on the verge of disaster by high flood walls holding back the Ohio River. With naivety and optimism, simple truths, questions instead of answers, Thomas leaves town in the wee hours with his two new friends: Twenty-five year old, first year teacher, and his lover, Alice Lowe and the towns misfit vagabond, anarchist Shiloh Tanager. They embark on a road trip to rural Vermont where they move into an abandoned farmhouse and try to live off the land.

I loved the premise of the story, and I enjoyed the atmosphere the author created, even though it seemed as if the reader was purposefully kept as an outsider. I was surprised by the tenderness I felt toward Shiloh and how much I didn’t like, nor understand, the narrators affection for Alice Lowe. I loved the details of the story by way of the impressionable youth’s perspective. I loved how the mundane was given character, how what was for breakfast didn’t bore me, or how the plow driver was a dive instructor seemed somehow significant. All of these small things, though overwhelmingly trivial, really made the book a portrait of life. The small, the good, the big, the bad; things and people being both beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

I also liked that that a premise of a high school boy’s love affair with his teacher, running away, living of the land… it had the potential to be a bit tawdry and dramatic, a cliched coming of age story that you’ve read before. But it was never that. It was a snippet of lives, a moment when those three people, were The Best People in the World to each other. Although those moments don’t last forever, as some stories try to make them out to, it doesn’t make them less significant.

Within the novel, there were random, and in my opinion, completely unnecessary, flashes into characters investigating “miracles” for the Catholic Church. These pieces, as far as I can tell, were meant to give information about The Boy. But they were so sparse and unrelated to the actual story line, that I found them distracting. I was annoyed by being taken away from the story that so captivated me, with these inconsequential bits of information. This, I did not like, and could have done without.

Otherwise, a well told story, characters that I wasn’t exactly attached to but interested in, and a style that left me satisfied.

[mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was strangely unsatisfying, despite being a book I'm sure I'll remember for a long time. When I wasn't feeling ambivalent toward the characters, I was feeling confused about their motivations. As we might have said in workshop a long time ago, I wasn't sure what was at stake for most of this book; when I finally found out, it wasn't worth the wait. So that was disappointing. What I'll remember for a while is the evocation of place, mainly Vermont, along with a few well-executed episodes. A crow is not a suitable pet.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the writing style... absolutely beautiful. Though I don't like getting bogged down in self-serving existential books, this one really exceeded expectations. I thought about it for a long time afterward. I loved it.

[Ajit · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book set in the seventies about living off the grid and being a free spirit. A boy leaves his family and hometown behind with a new friends; a girlfriend and an anarchist friend. They try living off the land and in seclusion. I really liked this book and recommended it to many.

[Randine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was almost deeper than I could go but I loved it. Very good. The soul of Justin Tussing is BIG.

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has to be one of the strangest books I have ever read...

[Benjamin Rubenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is about the joys and pains and adventures and humanity of new love. And it's told in the form of a story that moves so fast the author doesn't really provide context. That's strange at first, to start reading a new scene without much of an idea of how the previous concluded or how the characters got to this new one, but Tussing makes it work. I'm not surprised he could make work what for most writers, I imagine, would be almost impossible because Tussing was one of my workshop leaders at Stonecoast, as well as the program director. During my two-year writing program, he was one of my favorite people in the world, and I did what I could to get him to love me as a student; I suspect most students did. He was too good and witty and funny to show his love for us, but I have faith I earned it eventually.

At first I thought this was a YA novel because of the short and clear sentences and age of the narrator (17-ish). Then I came to realize the narrator is actually much older and is telling this story to us, the readers.

And then I began highlighting passage after passage. I think some of this writing is extraordinary and worthy of mottos to live by:

Alice started the car and we limped away. “Where the hell do we go now?” she asked.
Shiloh and I were in no rush to answer her. If you pointed in a direction and then things didn’t pan out, that might confirm that you were unlucky or undeserving of luck. Rather than try to shape our destiny, it seemed safer to let things run their course.

Before anything could be brought inside, we needed to air it out; it had to lose the scent of being cast off and take on the scent of being saved. We took the dresser drawers out and let them warm in the sun.

I didn’t see the point. “The point,” said Shiloh, “is to do it. And, after we’ve done it, well, maybe then we can find some point.”

Shiloh made a pot of coffee. Our spirits were high. I would never have friends like the friends I had in that room.

I had left people who loved me, and all because of the way it felt to hold someone’s hand and the magic of watching her sleep, and that, for me, turning away from those things would have been a betrayal of myself.

“It is impossible to imagine experiencing heartbreak in heaven, yet without the memory of heartbreak, heaven would have no purpose.”

[Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd read a few of the reviews prior to reading the book, and most were conflicted on how they felt about it. Leaning slightly more towards the negative.
So I knew going in that it might be a weird one, and not entirely in a good way. (I love weird ones, but preferably good weird right)

I find myself agreeing with most of the reviews. While it was not terrible, and there were a lot of memorable moments and relationships, I didn't love it.
As I said before, I like weird, so I liked that there was kind of no plot to it, that the characters were all bizarre outcasts, and that the writing style was often confusing and downplayed the weirdest moments. (Sometimes after something crazy happened, described only in one mild sentence and then moved on from, I had to reread it like "wait what just happened... Are we just gonna breeze past that?")
But I still felt like something special was missing.

A book I won't soon forget, but also a book I wouldn't recommend.

[Abbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book felt like the author was trying too hard to be deep or something. I think he was trying to make a point and/or a study on love and different types of love, but it just felt forced somehow.

[Andrée · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dud - not the best book in any sense. The blurb lured me in but it failed to deliver.
A bunch of dreary people running away to be dreary elsewhere.
But what do I expect for 25p eh?!

[Audrey Larsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally a good story, well, pieces of two stories that never properly connected but it was a little hard to follow.

[Andy Cornell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part reality, part fantasy -- which is not a bad thing. I am a fan of John Updike and Richard Ford. Tussing comes close to their abilities to chronicle the North American condition. As for fantasy I can suspend my disbelief over some aspects: the hidden body, the ability to survive for months in frozen Vermont on almost nothing and the puzzling lack of purpose for three lives that actually show much promise and hope. What was so troubling in their beings? It could have been more developed. But these are minor criticisms. The writing is first rate -- comparable to my aforementioned heroes. The plot intrigued and carried me through. The closing chapters were lyrical and beautiful. The lack of conclusion for the characters' stories left numerous openings for a sequel -- something I'd read.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A first novel from a short story writer, The Best People in the World explores the misery a small group of basically well-meaning people can inflict on each other when they go four-seasonal stir crazy. Most of the time, they have only each other for company, and every time they rub against each other literally or figuratively brings them more pain than comfort - especially when their physical survival or health is in jeopardy.

Justin Tussing does well in transporting the reader, who will share the trio's anxiety through every coming setback. There are many setbacks and challenges, and I felt the dread of the inevitable dissolution long before it happened.

While the seventeen year-old narrator's innocence makes perfect sense in the events of 1973, I did wish for a better integration with his older self (how old? we don't know) who occasionally contributes some details of jobs and women he would know later, which he mentions with nearly the same level of maturity.

Look for the answer to the basement mystery, suggested in the parallel plot of the miracle investigators.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thomas Mahey feels the literal and figurative walls around him. As the narrator of Justin Tussing's debut novel, The Best People in the World , Thomas takes us with him on his search for freedom.[return][return]It is 1972. Thomas is a 17-year-old living in Paducah, Kentucky, a town with a 20-foot high floodwall erected to protect it from the Ohio River. He feels similar walls forming around his life. In the summer before his junior year of high school, his father gets him a job at the local power plant, the same place his father labors much of his life. A self-described "second-tier" student, Thomas is in the vocational program, not the "standard curriculum." It reinforces his sense that his future is being circumscribed. Yet the events of the summer and school year soon lead him on a journey of reinvention.[return][return]Balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=669

[Corrinne Goldenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I'm still reeling from this piece. It falls under the lines of absurdist literature, which sort of surprises me because it seems like a thing of the past. This slice-of-life style novel is beautifully written but left to the reader on plot interpretation. You can tell the author was formerly a short story writer. He jumps around a bit and tends to leave out some pertinent information. However, the concept that love is all we need is intricately explored. In the end, we crave more. No matter how strong your faith and love is, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain a person when in the end, you die alone. The corpse represents this unwillingness to let go of our partners in life and eventually becomes destructive. I think the moral of the story is to be as self reliant as possible because things change rapidly and everything can be lost save yourself. It is sort of a morose theme but true nonetheless.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Tussing, who published a preview of this novel in the New Yorker, offers a melancholic slice of the American mythos that reflects its ideals and tarnished realities. Loving characters, including a narrator looking back on his experiences and emotions, populate the novel, but others, including two priests investigating miracles, left some critics wondering. Best People paints a wonderful canvas of 1970s America, both from the vantage point of the road and an isolated Vermont life, though little actually happens. Despite the imaginative, beautiful writing, this debut novel doesn't perfectly fulfill its promise. The New York Times Book Review sums up the general sentiment by describing the novel as "[e]qual parts euphoria and exhaustion."

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Jen Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't quite decided yet. The characters are well formed and have depth, and I went through periods of liking and disliking each one. It is a slow read. I was happy with the portrayal of Shiloh and his politics, and thought that the author must be an anarchist or have friends who are!

And in the end, it made me feel sad, especially for Thomas, but also for Shiloh. Alice wasn't likable for me.

[Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found myself very much into this book at the beginning, when it treated the early love story, and later when it told about the later stages of the relationship btwn Shiloh, Alice, and the boy. The middle though, could have used some serious chopping, since it only prolonged the Vermont idyll with nature observations and reinforcement of what was already known. This could have been a novella -- a really good novella.

[ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

He is a good writer. Lots of potential. But the plot didn't hold.

[Brian]

oregon book award

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started out slow, but overall was a different and interesting story.

[Amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely grew weary of the story about halfway through, but Tussing has some truly breathtaking literary moments here.

[Deb]

A Powell's recommendation.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting writing style. First novel. It took a bit to get going but I am still thinking about it which is nice.

[Megnificentfig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't love this book, but I liked it a whole lot, and think about it often.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good wiriting. BUt didn't like one of the major players and that was hard. beautiful and scary, vivid images.

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

eh.. wouldn't recommend. Language was great.. story not so much.. very little character development.. Maybe I just wasn't in the right head space for the sub plots.

[Biddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was beautifully written, almost poetic in places BUT it was tedious. Really struggle dto get through it as it wasn't headed anywhere it just dragged on and on.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

whole bunch of nothing.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got halfway through but couldn't finish this book