Anything Is Good

Ralph Silverman was a childhood buddy, a foreign film buff, a victim of bullies, a boy genius. He held long conversations with his pet parakeet and spent countless hours on a computer, creating mesmerizing music and solving problems in philosophy. He was a friend of great scholars and the son of a wealthy outer-borough businessman with shady associates and a second family. And, as he begins to take over the story from the narrator, he has found himself in South Florida, physically abused and then expelled into an unfamiliar world—with a broken pair of glasses, no money, and no shoes—by the distant cousin his sister left him with before disappearing forever.   From the celebrated author of , is a hypnotically compelling tale of a man haunted by the fate of his childhood buddy, and of that friend’s pleasures and misfortunes as he navigates an unhoused life—a life more complex and dramatic than a bypasser might ever imagine. “Very few writers can deliver a story with this much heart…a great novel.”—Sebastian Junger   “Waitzkin’s propulsive narrative makes for compelling reading from first page to last.”—Gabriel Byrne   “A gem of a book.”—