Such Good Work: A Novel

Johannes Lichtman

Feb 2019 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From Johannes Lichtman comes a wisely comic debut novel about a teacher whose efforts to stay sober land him in Sweden, but the refugee crisis forces a very different kind of reckoning.

You don’t have to be perfect to do good...

Jonas Anderson wants a fresh start.

He’s made plenty of bad decisions in his life, and at age twenty-eight he’s been fired from yet another teaching position after assigning homework like, Attend a stranger’s funeral and write about it. But, he’s sure a move to Sweden, the country of his mother’s birth, will be just the thing to kick-start a new and improved—and newly sober—Jonas.

When he arrives in Malmo in 2015, the city is struggling with the influx of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. Driven by an existential need to “do good,” Jonas begins volunteering with an organization that teaches Swedish to young migrants. The connections he makes there, and one student in particular, might send him down the right path toward fulfillment—if he could just get out of his own way.

“Such Good Work is, indeed, a bit Jonas-like: it’s wary of affectation or grandstanding; it works small, as if from a sense of modesty, a reluctance to presume; it cuts sincerity with the driest of humor” (The New Yorker). In his debut, Lichtman, “a remarkable thinker and social satirist” (The New York Times Book Review), spins a darkly comic story, brought to life with wry observations and searing questions about our modern world, and told with equal measures of grace and wit.

Ratings and reviews

SUCH GOOD WORK is an autofiction novel, a fictionalised autobiography. Jonas Anderson, our protagonist, is a creative writing teacher who has been battling drug addiction and drinking for most of his adult life. After yet another dismissal from a school, since he has dual American-Swedish citizenship, he decides to go to Sweden to pursue his Master's degree and try to sober up in a country where drugs are not so easily accessible. Written from a first person point of view, SUCH GOOD WORK is unlike other books I have read on the subject of drug addiction. Its aim is not to sensationalise or titillate, but to tell the story of a man who is dissatisfied with his life but doesn't quite know how to go about it. Jonas relates his withdrawal attempts in a matter-of-fact, and sometimes chilling way. I felt mostly neutral about Jonas: I didn't dislike him but I didn't like him either. He doesn't know who he is, and I don't feel I got to really now him ether. Jonas is defined by his addictions, and even when he tries to sober up, he doesn't really want to; it's what he knows he ought to do. Until he finds something that shakes him up. Even though I am in no way qualified, it eventually occurred to me that Jonas falls somewhere in the sociopathic spectrum and doing drugs is his way of trying to feel. SUCH GOOD WORK is very well written, it's fast-paced, but Jonas' head is a strange place to inhabit. He's selfish, unfeeling and human interactions are always a trial for him. However, these traits make him an excellent observer, and his insights on Sweden, Malmö, and immigration are most enlightening because of this. What began as a story about addiction ends with the plight of Muslim immigrants. SUCH GOOD WORK feels like a very long short story because, in the end, nothing is really settled for Jonas.

About the author

Johannes Lichtman’s debut novel,?Such Good Work, was chosen as a?5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation.?His work has appeared in?Tin House,?The Sun,?Travel + Leisure,?Los Angeles Review of Books,?Oxford American, and elsewhere.?He lives in Washington, DC.