The Good Part

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains mention of child loss.

The protagonist of The Good Part, Lucy jumps between her 26-year-old self and a future 42-year-old self. The novel is told from Lucy’s point of view, and this access to Lucy’s thoughts enables the reader to see her maturing and growing during her experience of traveling forward in time.

Lucy begins the novel as a junior TV researcher at a production company where she is almost at the bottom of the ladder and unappreciated. She expresses jealousy of her boss, Melanie Durham, and longs for monetary and professional success, both of which she attains after the wishing machine grants her wish to jump ahead in time: 42-year-old Lucy is “Queen Badger” at Badger TV, the company that she co-founded with Michael Green. However, while she has the wardrobe and financial success that she envied in Melanie, she soon realizes this success comes with strings attached. Her decision-making affects the future of her entire team, and she is under enormous pressure to make a successful pitch or risk putting everyone out of work. Twenty-six-year-old Lucy similarly dreams of skipping ahead to a time when she will be happily married, thus avoiding her current reality: a string of terrible dates and roommates with odd habits. However, life as a wife and mother also proves more difficult than Lucy anticipated, underscoring The Consequences of Wishes.

As Lucy settles into her new life, she develops as a character. Though she initially makes the kind of impulsive decisions 26-year-old Lucy would embrace, she slowly begins to consider the needs and wants of her husband, children, friends, and co-workers. Her outlook on both relationships and life broadly matures, such that by the end of the novel she recognizes both The Value of Family and Friendships and the importance of Gratitude and Appreciation for the Present. Her experience moving forward in time affects her even after she returns to her original timeline with no memory of her future life, as evidenced by her behavior when she calls a meeting with her roommates and suggests changes:

‘What’s got into you this morning? You’re being all Erin Brockovichy. Did you listen to a motivational podcast in your sleep or something?’ Emily asks.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I just woke up feeling good and decided I want to make a few changes’ (333).

Lucy’s newfound assertiveness and optimism indicate to the reader that her life will turn out the way she hopes it will because she is acting the way Future Lucy would act in this situation.

Lucy is aided in her struggles by the fact that she has a sense of humor, laughing with herself and with other characters about the absurdity of her time-jump situation. While she experiences some difficult things, like finding out about the death of her best friend and her second child, Lucy is resilient, bouncing back to play imaginative games with the children, flirt with her husband, and save her TV production company. She solves problems creatively and cares deeply about the people around her.