SOURCE: “The Murderous Era,” in Times Literary Supplement, August 30, 1991, p. 19.

In the following review, Clee offers a positive assessment of Goodness.

Tim Parks's sixth novel [Goodness] (one was written under a pseudonym) returns to a subject he has explored in earlier books: that of mania lurking just below the surface of suburban lives. Goodness is also the second work of fiction published this year, following Michael Dibdin's Dirty Tricks, to suggest that Thatcherite individualism may contain the seeds of murderous ruthlessness.

George Crawley believes himself to be a good man, and his wife, despite having received a fair amount of evidence to the contrary, encourages his belief. The reader of George's narrative knows him to be an insufferable prig. As Iris Murdoch showed in The Nice and the Good, there are events which will find out all but the truly good, or the truly cynical. For George, such...