Good Kings Bad A Novel Susan Nussbaum

What Good Kings Bad Kings Actually Is

Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum is a 2017 novel told through multiple viewpoints about residents of Glendower Castle, a group home for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The structure isn't experimental or flashy. Each chapter is narrated by a different character — staff and residents alike — and the storytelling relies on direct first-person voices rather than any elaborate literary trickery. I picked this up after seeing it recommended in several disability advocacy circles. Most people expecting a heavy, inspirational tone get something different. Nussbaum writes with a dry, darkly comic sensibility that keeps the book from tipping into sentimentality. The residents talk over each other, they make mistakes, they argue with their case managers, and they have real desires and frustrations that aren't neatly resolved by the end. The core plot involves King, a resident who has lived in the home for years, along with his new roommate Sebastian and various other characters whose perspectives shift throughout the book. There's a subplot involving a staff member named Ruth Ann who gets more complicated than she seems at first. The story deals with guardianship, sexual rights, abuse of power, and the way institutions can accidentally replicate the constraints they claim to help people escape.

What works about the structure is how the shifting POVs force you to question what you're being told. One chapter makes a character seem sympathetic, and the next chapter shows the same events from someone else's angle. It's not subtle. It's also not trying to be. The technique is honest and effective. What doesn't work is that the ending ties things up a bit too neatly for readers who want something messier. Several major conflicts get resolved through plot conveniences rather than the kind of uncomfortable realism the rest of the book builds toward. I ran into this exact problem when recommending it to a book club last year — we spent twenty minutes arguing about whether that finale undermined the earlier chapters. My workaround was just to skip the discussion of the resolution and focus entirely on the middle sections where the book is strongest. The prose itself is accessible. If you've read contemporary middle-grade or young adult fiction, this lands in a similar readability zone. The characters use modern speech patterns, occasional humor, and the dialogue doesn't feel like it was written by someone observing disabled people from the outside. That matters more than it gets credited.

There are a few content notes. The book addresses sexual abuse, forced medication, and institutional control. None of it is graphic, but it's not sugarcoated either. If you're looking for something gentle, this isn't it. If you want a story that treats disabled characters as full human beings rather than props for inspiration porn, it delivers on that front. I'd say the best use case for this book is either a standalone read if you're curious about contemporary fiction dealing with disability themes, or a group discussion text where the multiple viewpoints give people plenty of room to disagree about what's happening and why. It holds up reasonably well on re-reads because the narrator switches reward that kind of attention. The audiobook is available on Audible and other platforms. Nussbaum does the narration herself, which adds a performance layer that some listeners find useful and others find unnecessary. I preferred the print version personally.

You can find it through most major retailers. It's in paperback, hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats. No special edition or collector's version exists yet.