Too Good to Be True, Benjamin Anastas
Too Good to Be True, Benjamin Anastas
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Too Good to Be True
A Memoir

Author: Benjamin Anastas

Narrator: Tim Lundeen

Unabridged: 6 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/16/2012

Synopsis

When he was three, in the early 1970s, Benjamin Anastas found himself in his mother’s fringe-therapy group in Massachusetts, a sign around his neck: Too Good to Be True. The phrase haunted him through his life, even as he found the literary acclaim he sought after his 1999 novel, An Underachiever’s Diary, had made the smart set take notice. Too Good to Be True is his deeply moving memoir of fathers and sons, crushing debt and infidelity—and the first, cautious steps taken toward piecing a life back together.“It took a long time for me to admit I had failed,” Anastas begins. Broke, his promising literary career evaporated, he’s hounded by debt collectors as he tries to repair a life ripped apart by the spectacular implosion of his marriage, which ended when his pregnant wife left him for another man. Had it all been too good to be true? Anastas’s fierce love for his young son forces him to confront his own childhood, fraught with mental illness and divorce. His father’s disdain for money might have been in line with the ‘70s zeitgeist—but what does it mean when you’re dumping change into a Coinstar machine, trying to scrounge enough to buy your son a meal? Charged with rage and despair, humor and hope, this unforgettable book is about losing one’s way and finding it again, and the redemptive power of art.

About Benjamin Anastas

Benjamin Anastas is the author of An Underachiever’s Diary (hailed by Very Short List as “the funniest, most underappreciated book of the 1990s”) and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance, a New York Times Notable Book. His work has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, Granta, and many other places.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Eric on February 09, 2013

When Benjamin Anastas tells us that his memoir is about failure, he seems to believe it. He flagellates himself for never replicating the success of his first novel. He howls at his childish decision to cheat on his wife while on a business trip in Europe. He shakes with shame when telling us that h......more

Goodreads review by Howard on July 04, 2013

Here’s the thing about literary failure: if it’s real, we would never know. No misses the middling literary novel, or even the masterpiece, that was never written or never published. By definition. I speak from bitter experience. Okay, having gotten that off my chest, I can say that Too Good To Be Tru......more

Goodreads review by Amy on October 28, 2012

I loved this book--for its wisdom about money, about heartbreak, about longing--for its honesty. Anastas's poverty may not run quite so deep as those who are truly suffering in this country, but I know many of us will recognize ourselves in his struggles, and in the connections he makes to what we l......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on October 27, 2012

Something of a disappointment. A memoir of a sort of a once-successful author who finds himself entering his 40s divorced, broke, and adrift. I went into it rooting for him, but I can't say the story he tells is particularly insightful or compelling. Anastas is a talented writer, to be sure, but the......more

Goodreads review by Deirdre on October 21, 2012

Haven't read a book this compelling in a long time and I read a lot. Writers especially will devour it but I think anyone would love it. I bought this on my kindle after I read the favorable review in The New York Times. I just had a baby a week ago and went back and forth between staring at my son'......more

Quotes

“The failure is real, the voice is raw, the story is haunting.” —Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom “It’s all very funny and a joy to read, but what lifts this memoir from good to outstanding is that the humor and the darkness are merely a patina. Under the irony there is no irony. Under the panic lies a remorseful heart, a steady determination to figure this to and become a better person.” —New York Times Book Review “One of the most acclaimed memoirs of 2012.” —The Week

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