52 pages • 1 hour read
The Good Part
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Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains mention of child loss.
A 26-year-old woman named Lucy wakes up to water dripping on her bed from the ceiling above; the upstairs neighbor, Mr. Finkley, is taking a bath, even though he has been warned not to because of the existing leakage problem. Lucy has three roommates: Julian, whose girlfriend Betty is always around; Emily, who regularly has one-night stands; and Zoya, one of Lucy’s best friends. Waiting for her turn in the bathroom, Lucy encounters Ezekiel, Emily’s guest, Julian’s beard clippings in the sink, and Betty’s batch of bone broth all over the kitchen. When it’s finally her turn to get in the shower, there are bones from the broth there. Lucy is frustrated by her living situation. Both the run-down state of the apartment itself and the frustrating roommates bother her. When she finds out that Zoya, who recently took a higher-paying job, is leaving, Lucy feels even worse.
Lucy manages to get ready for her first day as a junior researcher at her TV company, a position that she hopes will allow her to give input and be more involved in the planning and production process. Zoya promises to meet her for drinks after work to celebrate.
Chapter 2 Summary
Lucy takes a call from her father and mother on her way to work. They encourage her to have a good day and double-check that she’s dressed appropriately. Once Lucy gets to work, she realizes that she never had breakfast and is very hungry. Her boss, Melanie, sends Lucy to get pastries for the day’s meetings but does not give Lucy the money upfront. Lucy is broke, so she must ask a coworker for enough money to buy the fancy croissants.
During the meeting, Lucy tries to share her ideas, but she gets passed over. Lucy is disappointed because she thought she would get to participate more actively in the planning, but she instead keeps finding herself making copies and running errands, as she did in her previous position. Coleson, the new runner who took Lucy’s place, is still learning the ropes, and Lucy’s coworkers prefer to ask her so that the job will get done right. Lucy shares her notebook, which contains details like how everyone takes their tea, with Coleson.
Lucy is outraged when she returns to the meeting room to get her croissant only to find that they have been dumped in the trash. She is so hungry that she picks one out of the garbage to eat. When Melanie gives Lucy yet another runner task and Lucy protests that she thought she would have different responsibilities now, Melanie replies, “Ambition is like perfume, Lucy. A little goes a long way” (21). Lucy is devastated and feels that nothing will ever change at her job.
Chapter 3 Summary
Lucy and her best friends—Zoya, Faye, and Roisin—meet for drinks after work to celebrate Lucy’s new job title. Lucy shares how frustrated she is about how nothing seems to have changed at work. Her friends offer financial assistance and emotional support. Zoya offers to get Lucy a position as an estate agent where she works. Lucy’s comment that she is not ready to give up on her dreams upsets Zoya, who traded life as an artist for more money to travel and have nice things.
After the women part, Lucy realizes she has no money to get home and will have to walk the 45 minutes back to her apartment. Her ballet slippers quickly blister her feet, and the walk is miserable. Then, she receives a notification from her dating app that Dale29 is nearby. Dale invites her for a drink at a nearby pub, but when she arrives, they discover that the pub is closed. Dale invites Lucy over to his place nearby, and Lucy decides he is safe enough to go with so that she can charge her phone.
The conversation is good, but when Dale proves to be a terrible kisser, Lucy excuses herself to the bathroom. When she returns to the living room, Dale is naked and asks for a sexual favor. Lucy hastily leaves.
Chapter 4 Summary
Lucy leaves Dale’s apartment, frustrated at yet another terrible date. As she’s walking, the rain starts to pour and the glue in her shoes starts to dissolve. Her phone is still dead, so she cannot call a friend. Instead, she sees a newsagent’s shop and ducks into it to seek shelter from the rain. In the back of the store is a large machine labeled “Wishing Machine.” The woman who runs the store explains how to put money in and says that Lucy looks like she might need a wish. After taking the coins the woman offers, Lucy makes a wish to “skip to the good part, where [her] life is sorted” (36). After she finishes wishing, the machine dispenses the flattened penny with the words “Your Wish is Granted” on it (37). The woman warns her to be careful about wishes, and Lucy leaves the shop.
Chapter 5 Summary
Lucy wakes up with a terrible headache and realizes she’s in a strange room in bed with a man she has never met. She worries that maybe the man has abducted her because she does not know how she arrived here. She goes into the bathroom and is shocked by her reflection, which shows a much older version of herself. The man wakes up and talks to her as if he knows her well, asking about her big night out drinking. Lucy continues to be confused, only to find a baby (Amy) in the hallway, reaching for her and calling her “Mama.” Lucy tries to leave, but then she is surprised by a seven-year-old boy (Felix), who seems to know right away that though Lucy looks like his mother, something is off. He asks if she is an alien. She continues to make her way toward the door, realizing that she is in a beautifully furnished home. Finally, she notices a wedding picture of her and the strange man, whose name is Sam.
Chapter 6 Summary
Lucy, shocked, throws up in the bathroom and asks Felix what year it is. When he replies, she learns that it is 16 years later and she is now 42 years old. Maria, the housekeeper, comes in to change Amy’s diaper and asks Lucy if she is sick.
Lucy finds her phone and calls Zoya, Faye, and Roisin, but no one answers. She takes a shower and realizes as she gets dressed that 42-year-old Lucy has a fabulous wardrobe. Leaving the house, she starts to notice the advances in technology, including a 3D projection screen in her map app and a palm-activated car that speaks to her. The car warns that her alcohol level is too high to drive, so she calls a cab to go to the train station. At the station, she is shocked by the price of a coffee but relieved to get on a train to London. She reels from the surreal nature of her morning.
Chapter 7 Summary
London looks different in this new timeline, and landmarks like Vauxhall Tavern have been torn down and replaced with modern buildings. Lucy arrives at her old apartment, which has a different name label on it now, and rings the bell, but no one answers. She decides to call one of her old roommates, Emily, to find out what is going on. Emily answers but is surprised to hear from Lucy and worries that Lucy is unwell. On the video call, Emily looks different, with a mature hairstyle; she is a responsible working mother now. She urges Lucy to go to the doctor and offers to help Lucy get help.
Lucy receives a call from someone named Trey at the office, who is frantic to find her because she is supposed to be pitching an idea to an important client today. Lucy says she is sick and someone else should handle the pitch. Lucy tries to make her way back to the shop where the wishing machine was located, but the building is no longer there.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
The exposition in Chapters 1 through 3 establishes Lucy’s life as a 26-year-old junior researcher for a TV station, examining her home life (Chapter 1), her work life (Chapter 2), and her love life (Chapter 3). Cousens gives this thorough overview of Lucy’s life to highlight the difficulty of her current situation, encouraging the reader to empathize with Lucy’s desire to escape the challenges of this stage of her life. The chapters highlight specific pain points that are resolved once her wish is granted, as she trades her dilapidated apartment for a beautiful and safe home, her grunt work for professional success and fulfillment, and a string of unsatisfying dates for a partner who is handsome and caring. The starkness of the contrast makes Lucy’s ultimate choice to return to her life as a 26-year-old more meaningful while contributing to her disorientation in the immediate wake of her time travel.
Similarly, Cousens inserts a few benchmarks that Lucy uses to gauge success and juxtaposes how these look in her 26-year-old life versus her 42-year-old life. One of these is bookcases. In Chapter 1, Lucy describes the plastic storage box she’s using to hold her “beloved books.” She reflects that she feels like “a mother who’s failed to provide for her children. They deserve a decent bookcase; they deserve to be displayed, spine out, sorted by genre, not heaped in a pile on the floor of [her] damp room. One day, books, one day” (2-3). This dream is fulfilled after she wakes up in her new house and finds “a huge built-in bookcase, neatly filled with hundreds of books. [She] always wanted a bookshelf just like that” (47). Cousens’s use of italics in both passages emphasizes the importance Lucy places on the bookshelf. The fact that she notices this detail while she is still trying to piece together what has happened to her after waking up in a strange house also demonstrates how much weight she places on material possessions as an indicator of success. Likewise, the fact that she compares her books to children highlights the naivete of her still-26-year-old perspective; once Lucy has experienced the joys and pains of real motherhood, she would not reach for this analogy.
In the meantime, Cousens also uses pacing to lay the groundwork for Lucy’s desire to fast-track “success”: with a series of escalating problems that ratchet up the tension. Waking up with a damp bed and dealing with difficult roommates are not out of the ordinary, but experiencing a frustrating day at work when Lucy thought she had left such problems behind is a blow. When she realizes she has no cab fare, finds that her shoes are falling apart in the rain, and goes on a supremely disappointing impromptu date, Lucy concludes that her life is at rock bottom. Cousens uses these events to ensure that Lucy is desperate to get out of her current life circumstances and is willing to engage with the wishing machine she finds.
That encounter lays the groundwork for the novel’s exploration of both Gratitude and Appreciation for the Present and The Consequences of Wishes. Notably, the old woman at the register remarks, “Be careful what you wish for…Life is never quite sorted, whatever stage you’re at” (37). This foreshadowing indicates that even when Lucy gets her wish, she will discover that there will still be areas of her life that need improvement; what matters is recognizing all that is good in her life.
For example, one area of Lucy’s life that is going well before the wish is granted is her relationships and support system. Lucy’s friends, Zoya, Faye, and Roisin, happily celebrate Lucy’s promotion and encourage her amid Lucy’s disillusionment. That they are also the first people whom Lucy attempts to call when she realizes that she’s skipped ahead 16 years underscores how much she relies on them for wisdom and insight. The Value of Family and Friendships is evident in the fact that the women in Lucy’s life have been there for her amid life’s challenges—even when those friends have all moved on to different stages of their own.
By contrast, Lucy finds her new 42-year-old life to be disorienting. Cousens uses an allusion to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to help the reader understand just how out of place Lucy feels: “‘I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,’ I say to my little map self. Zooming out, I establish I’m in Farnham, a town in Surrey, forty-five miles from London, which might as well be Kansas” (54). Surrounded by 3D projection maps, cars that measure her blood alcohol level, and other new technology, Lucy feels transported to a different reality. This science-fiction element underscores how much time has passed, for both Lucy and the reader.
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