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One of the reasons I was interested in trying to unpack the meanings of kitsch memory culture, say for instance in relationship to 9/11, is precisely the ways in which it creates this culture of comfort, that allows us to feel reassured. And that allows us to not confront the larger questions, about the project of American empire, about the project of national identity, about our priorities and our values as a nation, and about the kind of sacrifices that we have demanded on those serving in the armed forces, and all of the ways in which many families and many communities were really devastated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

The novel narrates the story of Oskar Schell, a precocious nine-year-old inventor, pacifist, percussionist, and Francophile, whose father died during the attacks of 9/11. A couple of years after his father’s death, he finds a mysterious key in an envelope with the name “Black” on it, in a vase in a closet. Sure that the key belonged to his father, he decides to visit everyone named “Black” in the five boroughs of New York to discover what it opens. Intertwined with Oskar’s quest are letters written by his grandparents, who went through the bombings of Dresden in the Second World War.

The Good Life is a story about many things: it deals with love and loss, with life and death, with contradictory feelings that, in the end, are all but one.