Good for Nothing - Softcover

"Brandon Graham is a very funny, painfully observant, no-holds-barred American writer. In Good for Nothing he shows us America now: out of work, out of shape, slightly suicidal but retaining a sharp sense of the absurd. This is a brilliant book. When times are really horrible it's good to be able to laugh (especially at ourselves)." Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller's Wife "[T]his is a very, very funny book. [It] could be the lovechild of Bill Bryson and Martin Amis. And it's peppered with the kind of slick slapstick situation comedy that made the Hangover movies such big hits. But at its heart is a very serious point. It is about the tsunami of destruction that has hit Middle America since the financial crisis." Daily Mail

A novel in which peaks of humour and troughs of tragedy intermingle as Flip Mellis tries to get his life together, after a suicide attempt - like much else in his life - fails to achieve its goal. Overweight, weak-willed, and quick to criticise others, Flip has a self-fulfilling fatalism which leads him to stumble through each day, hoping against hope that he can get a job, mend his marriage and rebuild his life. Perceptively observed characters from American small-town life populate the book in hilarious cameos and get in the way of Flip's well-meaning attempts to reform himself.