52 pages • 1 hour read
Sophie CousensThe Good Part
Sophie CousensFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Sophie Cousens
Cousens is a British author and screenwriter whose novels include This Time Next Year (2020), Just Haven’t Met You Yet (2021), Before I Do (2022), The Good Part (2023), and Is She Really Going Out with Him? (2024). She also wrote the screenplay for the streaming adaptation of This Time Next Year (2024). Her novels feature female protagonists who find themselves in unusual and humorous situations that allow for exploration of fate, personal growth, and what matters most in life. As romantic comedies, these novels also involve a romantic connection and an attempt to discover who the protagonist’s best match should be.
Before becoming a novelist, Cousens worked as a television producer in the UK, which gave her experience in storytelling across formats and helped inspire her creative writing career. Writing for successful TV programming, Cousens learned how to create compelling storylines and characters. She worked on popular shows like The Graham Norton Show, Big Brother, and Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. This experience underpins her portrayal of main character Lucy in The Good Part, who aspires to build a successful career in TV and ultimately becomes a producer at her own TV company. Cousens pivoted from her TV career to full-time writing after the success of her first novel, This Time Next Year, in 2020.
Literary Context: The Portrayal of Time Travel in Fiction
Time travel has inspired writers for centuries, serving as a device to explore themes of destiny, change, and the impact of historical events on the present and future. The concept opens up historical or futuristic worlds that would otherwise be inaccessible while also permitting authors to question the nature of time itself, depicting it not as a linear and fixed sequence but as a malleable construct. In classic texts like H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), time travel functions as both a scientific marvel and a cautionary lens, presenting possible dystopian futures that reflect contemporaneous anxieties about technological advancement and social decay.
Time travel also presents a unique framework for character development and moral exploration. Characters who travel through time often encounter alternate versions of themselves or loved ones, allowing for examination of personal choices and their far-reaching effects. Works like Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) employ time travel as a way to explore the complexities of relationships and the experience of love across time. This premise highlights the tension between fate and free will, as characters grapple with questions of agency and whether their actions can genuinely alter their destinies. In The Good Part, for instance, some events appear fixed or “destined,” such as when Lucy attends the karaoke bar in the Epilogue, but whether other events come to pass remains unclear. For example, at the end of the novel, baby Chloe hasn’t been born, leaving open the possibility that, in this timeline, she might survive.
Additionally, the structure of time-travel narratives often mirrors the emotional journeys of the characters, with movement through time symbolizing internal growth or a deeper understanding of self and others. This is the case in The Good Part, as when Lucy travels to her future, she realizes that without the memories and experiences that shaped her life, it doesn’t have as much value or meaning. Ironically, time travel thus serves as a way of underscoring Gratitude and Appreciation for the Present.
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