Goodbye Days (Zentner)

Goodbye Days 
Jeff Zentner, 2017
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780553524062


Summary
Goodbye Days asks what you would do if you could spend one last day with someone you lost.

Where are you guys? Text me back. That's the last message Carver Briggs will ever send his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. He never thought that it would lead to their death.

Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, a powerful judge is pressuring the district attorney to open up a criminal investigation.
 
Luckily, Carver has some unexpected allies: Eli’s girlfriend, the only person to stand by him at school; Dr. Mendez, his new therapist; and Blake’s grandmother, who asks Carver to spend a “goodbye day” together to share their memories and say a proper farewell.
 
Soon the other families are asking for their own goodbye day with Carver—but he’s unsure of their motives. Will they all be able to make peace with their losses, or will these goodbye days bring Carver one step closer to a complete breakdown or—even worse—prison? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Asheville, North Carolina, USA
• Education—J.D., Vanderbilt University
• Awards—William C. Morris from the American Library Assn.
• Currently—lives in Nashville, Tennessee

Before Jeff Zentner became an author, he was a guitarist-singer-songwriter. Before that he was a lawyer, in fact, an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Tennessee. He earned his JD degree from Vanderbilt in 2006 and tried cases for the state for a number of years. He also put in time as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.

Although he didn't pick up the guitar until he was 21, it was music and songwriting that became his passions. In the early 2000s he joined a band called Creech Holler, and although it received good reviews, the group eventually broke up. At that point, Zentner cut his own solo albums, releasing five CDs on his own. He also appeared on recordings with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Thurston Moore, Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan, and Lydia Lunch, among others.

Then, while volunteering as a guitar teacher for the Tennessee Teen Rock Camp and the Southern Girls Rock Camp, he was inspired by the young people he worked with to try something different. As he explained it to BookPage:

Working with these amazing teens…showed me how young people cling to the art they love and are willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves and be vulnerable for it. The art you love as a young person is so formative. I wanted to create art for that audience.… I would say that volunteering at Rock Camp made me want to write about kids who are creators—musicians, specifically.

Realizing, as he told the Washington Post that he "was never that technically skilled as a musician" to be successful, he decided to try writing novels instead of songs.

His foray into fiction came in 2016 with his novel, The Serpent King, which received rave reviews and won the William C. Morris Award from the American Library Association. The book land on the "Best of 2016" list of seemly every book review media outlet. He followed his debut with a second book, Goodbye Days, in  2017. 

Zentner lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and son. (Adapted from various online sources. Retrieved 5/3/2017.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) From the opening line, Zentner expertly channels Carver’s distinctive voice as a 17-year-old.… Flashbacks and daydreams capture the jovial spirit of…shenanigans interspersed with poignant admissions only best friends would share. Racial tensions, spoiled reputations, and broken homes all play roles in an often raw meditation on grief (Ages 14–up).
Publishers Weekly


Although sprinkled with lighter stories of the friends in happier times, this is a weighty, well-crafted novel…explor[ing] the somber and complex realities of life, especially responsibility, fractured relationships, and the butterfly effect of consequences (Grades 9-up). —Emily Moore, Camden County Library System, NJ
School Library Journal


(Starred review.) Zentner does an excellent job in creating empathetic characters, especially his protagonist Carver, a budding writer whose first-person account of his plight is artful evidence of his talent.
Booklist


Zentner's novel peels back the many layers of feeling that Carver experiences as he deals with his family, the families of his friends, and school, the present-tense narration putting readers directly in Carver's head. However,…his voice is at times too adult…. Still, it is a novel full of wisdom…. A fine cautionary tale and journey toward wisdom, poignant and realistic (Ages 14-18).
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Goodbye Days…then take off on your own:

1. What was your experience reading Goodbye Days?  Does the humor in the story help leaven the book for you? Or is it simply too sad, even grim, to read?

1. How culpable, legally, is Carver for the death of his three friends?

3. When Blake's grandmother explains the concept of goodbye to Carver she says: "Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet… Makes you wonder what'd happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together." Explain what she means by that observation. Do you feel that you have left pieces of yourself with others—friends and family? Does that mean you're a different person to different people? Does it imply there is no true you? Or what?

4. What do you think of Carver? What are the ways he must try to adjust to life after the accident, to cope not just with his sense of guilt but also with his loneliness and grief? He describes himself as "a beach in November." What would that feel like?

5. Carver talks about waking up after a dream, crying "because your shot at redemption is another thing you’ve lost. And you’re tired of losing things." Why is redemption so difficult? Is redemption real or is it an emotional-psychological state? Does someone confer redemption?

6. What role do Jesmyn, Georgia, and the rest of his family play in Carver's recovery process?

7. What does Carver come to know and understand by the end of the book—about himself and his friends? How has he grown?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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