In these inventive and formally daring stories, Dustin M. Hoffman shines a light into the dark corners of American suburbia. The housepainters, contractors, formerly incarcerated carnival workers, and fathers that populate these pages are doing their best to overcome life’s brutal indifference. Characters sometimes face unusual situations: one plays infinite games of Monopoly with God, while the Man in the Yellow Hat must decide how to react when a window washer is hospitalized with serious injuries. Mostly, though, they navigate the challenges of grief, poverty, and arguments with siblings that many of us will find all too familiar. With brilliance and perception, Hoffman interrogates the intersections of labor and masculinity, peeling back the spackled facades of class, family, and domesticity. Such a Good Man depicts darkness, cruelty, and absurdity without flinching—and reveals the eternal human desire for intimacy, especially when it remains just out of reach.
