Susan Nussbaum's gutsy debut,
Good Kings Bad Kings, hits bookshelves today--and you don't want to miss it. The winner of Barbara Kingsolver's 2012 PEN/Bellweather prize for fiction centers on the residents and staff of the ILLC, a state-run institutions for disabled youth. The residents range from 10-year olds with aggression disorders to wheelchair-bound 18-year olds incapable of dressing themselves; the staff range from drivers with good intentions and little understanding of mental illness to doctors with medical training and an eye for dollar signs to nurses with little training, less patience, and even less compassion.
Nussbaum masters the voices of each of these incredibly diverse perspectives, resulting in a novel that is at once as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking, challenging readers to reconsider what it means to be disabled in a world that turns its back on those less able than our standards demand.
---
Good Kings Bad Kings | Susan Nussbaum | Algonquin | Hardcover | May 2013 | 336 pages | Buy from an independent near you
No comments
Thanks for stopping by!