This reading group guide for Such Good Work includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Johannes Lichtman . The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. Introduction Jonas Anderson wants a fresh start. He''s made plenty of bad decisions in his life, and at age twenty-eight he''s been fired from yet another teaching position after assigning homework like Visit a stranger''s funeral and write about it . But he''s sure a move to Sweden, the country of his mother''s birth, will be just the thing to kick-start a new and improved--and newly sober--Jonas. When he arrives in Malmö in 2015, the city is struggling with the influx of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. Driven by an existential need to "do good," Jonas begins volunteering with an organization that teaches Swedish to young immigrants.
The connections he makes there, with one student in particular, might send him down the right path toward fulfillment--if he could just get out of his own way. Such Good Work is a darkly comic novel, brought to life with funny, wry observations and searing questions about our modern world, told with equal measures of grace and wit. Topics & Questions for Discussion 1. Such Good Work plays with the idea of things or behaviors that are good for you, or things that are good for others. Do you think those things are subjective? Or is there a list of "good" things that every person should be working toward? 2. Addiction is a prominent theme in Such Good Work , both explicitly and implicitly. Aside from Jonas''s drug use, what are some other addictions, vices, or compulsions that you notice throughout the novel, on levels big and small? 3. Sweden is a country that is underexplored and underexposed in fiction as a setting.
What did you know about Sweden when you came to Such Good Work , and what did you learn about it as you read? What was it like reading about an American living abroad? 4. There are a few women in Jonas''s life--Anja, Alexandra, Katja, Stella. How are these relationships similar and different to one another, and what role do they play for him and for the larger story? 5. Jonas isn''t necessarily an unlikeable character, but he is absolutely--and self-admittedly--flawed. Does that make him more accessible? More human? What did you like about Jonas as a protagonist and narrator? 6. At different points in the novel, Jonas questions whether addiction benefits creativity, citing Ernest Hemingway, David Foster Wallace, and other writers who have battled demons in the midst of producing great work. Do you think there''s validity to the theory that genius stems from dysfunction? 7. When Jonas is teaching in the US, one of his students is writing a paper on race relations, and throughout his time in Sweden, the people around him compare the responses both countries have to refugees, race, and the political implications of both.
How are they similar and different? What does Jonas learn and how does he engage with each? 8. Jonas engages with some dark themes and topics throughout the novel, but there are also some moments of lightness and humor. What were some of your favorites? Do you think that incorporating them made for a better reading experience? 9. As he spends more time in Sweden, how does Jonas''s view of the world and the ways his new and old home countries respond to crises change and evolve? 10. In the opening pages of Such Good Work , Jonas says, "When I used to get high, places were interchangeable. Everywhere was the best place ever--and then the worst. But now place mattered very much." What role does place play in this novel, in Jonas''s life, and in your life? 11.
Two characters who we hear a lot about but rarely see are Stella and Zach, Jonas''s friends from home, but they are still really important to him. What role do they play in Jonas''s life, and what do they represent in the larger story? 12. Throughout Such Good Work , Jonas thinks about the ways in which people--including himself--perform outrage at certain injustices but then do little to actually prevent them from happening again. Have you noticed a similar phenomenon in our world and daily lives? In the novel, Jonas "mentally rewrote each of these memories into scenes in which I''d done something"? Have you ever done this? 13. What is a world or media event that has impacted you in the same way that Jonas is impacted by reading about Alan Kurdi and other refugees in crisis? In many ways, Jonas becomes much more affected by these issues when he meets Aziz and the other boys. Do you think that we need a personal connection and human face to truly feel motivated to act and pitch in? 14. Toward the end of the novel, Jonas says he wants to correct the world. There is also another scene in which a person is criticized for doing more harm than good for dropping everything and going to volunteer with the Red Cross.
After seeing the complexities of "such good work" in the novel, do you think that it''s possible for one person--or a group of people--to solve the world''s problems? 15. Thinking about the title of the novel, the story, the characters, and the themes, what does it mean to do "such good work" or be a good person? Has your definition or perspective changed as you''ve read and discussed Lichtman''s novel? Do we do "such good work" for others, or for ourselves? Enhance Your Book Club 1. As a group, choose a cause you all believe in and find organizations that support the cause. Discuss how your group can fundraise for the cause in your community. 2. Find a recipe for Swedish meatballs or other Swedish foods and serve them at your next book club meeting! A Conversation with Johannes Lichtman Okay, so, first question. What initially inspired you to write Such Good Work ? Well, I started writing what eventually became the first chapter of Such Good Work as a short story called "You Really Have to Stop the Killing" in 2013. The short story I wrote was very different from what ended up being the first chapter.
There was a teacher who was trying to hold it together and there were facts about animals that lived a really long time, and that was about it. But there was something about the narrator, about the voice, that I liked, so I worked on that story for maybe two years. I also wrote two other short stories from the narrator''s perspective, so by the time I published "You Really Have to Stop the Killing," I had a good chunk of material from this narrator''s perspective. I thought about doing a collection of linked stories, but eventually I decided to try to write between the stories and build it as a novel instead, partly because there''s something really freeing about writing a work in which the chapters don''t have to be able to stand on their own and can just function as parts of the whole (in short story collections, each story, of course, has to work on its own). There were a bunch of other reasons that I chose to swerve into writing it as a novel, too, and now I''m realizing, about two minutes into my answer, that I''m answering the question "How did you write the novel?" rather than the question you asked, which was: "Why did you write the novel?" I think the how is easier to explain. It took me about three hundred pages to answer the why when I was writing the book, so who knows how long it would''ve taken me to answer it here. On the surface, it seems like you and Jonas have a couple of things in common. Your names are similar, you both have familial ties to Sweden, hold dual citizenship, have lived in California, and you''ve both been teachers.
That leads us to wonder: How much of the novel is autobiographical, or taken from life? How dare you ask me that? Just kidding. This is, understandably, a question that comes up a lot. Which I get. When I read books by Jenny Offill or Ben Lerner or Rachel Cusk or whoever, I wonder how much is autobiographical. I don''t think it affects my understanding or experience of the texts much--but I''m still curious. The short answer is that some of my novel is autobiographical but definitely not all of it. I could never have published this as a memoir--not even close. I was actually asked by friends and some publishing people if I had considered making it a memoir instead, since I guess readers just assumed it was pretty much an autobiography.
But there was way too much made up, and the stuff that is taken from my life is so exaggerated, condensed, combined, or altered that even the autobiographical portions couldn''t be published as nonfiction. That said, by giving the character a similar name as me and giving us similar biographies--not trying to make him a fifty-something Danish history teacher or whatever--it was a nod to the reader to sort of say, "Yes, this is based on my life. It''s also a novel. Do with that what you will." I am, at least at this point in my life, not terribly interested in making up new worlds, wholly imagined characters, complicated fictional family trees, etc. I often like reading books that do these things well--it''s just not something that I want to do in my own writing right now. I''m more interested in taking places a.