Good Choices

Bonny Brooks - Good Choices Thirty-five, P is a woman caught between commitment and chaos; about to upend her current stable life to invoke the tumult of her former, addicted one. Or perhaps just walk into the sea. Desperately trying to 'finally do the right things', she has back-burnered much of her own writing ambition to be the echo of her self-absorbed Right Writer fiancee; a man with less talent and far less raw material to draw on than her, but whose charmed roots opened doors. When we meet her, she is visiting old mates in Bristol, trying to write her wedding vows. One inspirational talk delivered at her old rehab, a chance meeting with a fellow former inpatient she used to fuck in the laundry room, and one junkie handbag thief later, and P is on a mission to save her engagement that takes her through the crack-houses and blues clubs she used to frequent. But does she even want her engagement? And what's so wrong with walking into the sea? Written partly as a series of no-send wedding vow drafts and journal entries, Good Choices explores the ways in which we try to impose narrative on our lives, for the implied audience always judging. Bonny Brooks writes with eye-watering frankness, empathetic and full-hearted to the last.