Max has been married to Tina for twenty-five years. She is the love of his life, but now he must come to terms with the fact that she is to spend a year away on a work assignment—away, for the first time, from their home, their children and their life together. Her absence leaves him feeling like an Odysseus in reverse: he stays put whilehis Penelope goes out into the world.

Max, alone with his three teenage sons for the first time, is left contemplating life and the daily routine of the little bar of which he is the proprietor. As he spends more time with the regulars their problems begin to become his own. This new novel by Alex Capus is a hymn to trust, friendship and life’s small pleasures. Told with his trademark humor, Life is Good is a novel about finding contentment in rootedness as the world speeds up. 
 

Alex Capus is a French-Swiss novelist who writes in German. He lives in Olten, Switzerland, with his wife and five sons. John Brownjohn is a translator from French and German. Among his recent translations are Ellin Carsta’s The Draper's Daughter, Leo Perutz’s The Little Apple, Ulli Lust’s The Voices in the Dark, Jean-Claude Carrière’s Please, Mr Einstein. 

 

— Shelf Awareness