Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Seemingly everybody on the class ladder scrabbles for a definition of human decency in the latest from Thompson (The Year We Left Home, 2011, etc.). The novel opens with a penetrating vision of a lower-middle-class family sinking fast. Sean is a divorced, out-of-work handyman who's about to lose his Bay Area house and his grip on his teenage son, Conner; when Sean decides to meet a woman via Craigslist, the attempted one-night stand only leaves his body broken in a highway wreck. The bad news doesn't stop there: Nearby, divorcee Art is forced to take in his teenage daughter, who's become a disciplinary nightmare back in Ohio after witnessing her half sister's murder in a school shooting. After a stint of petty thievery, Conner does odd jobs for a wealthy widow, Mrs. Foster, who wants to do something with her late husband's largesse. So, she taps her nurse, Christie (also Art's neighbor), to run a nonprofit with a vague purpose and name: The Humanity Project. The worlds-in-collision setup is contrived, but Thompson's handling of it is superb and unforced. She wants to explore how much of our bad behavior, from lousy dates to murder, is hard-wired, and in Sean and Conner, she exposes how much our actions are grim functions of economic circumstance. Yet this book isn't preachy, and Thompson has a knack for rendering characters who are emotionally fluid but of a piece: A daughter of Mrs. Foster's who's outraged at her squandered inheritance is selfish, yes, but her despair about a nonprofit's ability to repair humanity is legitimate. Thompson caps the story with a smart twist ending that undoes many of the certainties the reader arrived at in the preceding pages. A rare case of a novel getting it both ways: A formal, tightly constructed narrative that accommodates the mess of everyday lives.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal
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What does it mean to be a good person? National Book Award finalist Thompson (The Year We Left Home) sets up characters who aren't happy or well adjusted, let alone "good," but who accurately represent problems within today's society. There are numerous characters, with no central player except Linnea, a teenager who witnesses a school shooting. Her subsequent behavior problems lead her mother to send Linnea to stay with her deadbeat father, Art, an adjunct professor with little ambition or connection to his offspring. Teenage Conner is suffering in a different way. His father has been injured in an accident and is now unemployed and addicted to painkillers; as a result, their home is in foreclosure. Art's neighbor Christie is a nurse entrusted by a wealthy, eccentric patient with running an odd charity called the Humanity Project. Its mission is unclear, but its benefactor wonders whether one can pay people to be good. The interconnections among these characters gradually unfold as Thompson develops the story. VERDICT This is not light reading; Thompson wants her readers to think about humanity, but she doesn't probe deeply. Though the story is well crafted, it's hard to become engaged, particularly because the characters aren't entirely likable. [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/12.]-Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden--Sydney Coll. Lib., VA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* Thompson (The Year We Left Home, 2011) achieves exceptional clarity and force in this instantly addictive, tectonically shifting novel. As always, her affection and compassion for her characters draw you in close, as does her imaginative crafting of precarious situations and moments of sheer astonishment. The plot revolves around two southern California single fathers and their teenage offspring. Sean is struggling to find construction work as his house goes into foreclosure. His son, Conner, should be looking forward to college, but, instead, he, too, is scrambling for a job. Art, a pot-smoking, part-time college teacher smitten with his neighbor, Christie, a worldly-wise nurse and the moral fulcrum of the novel, has played no role in his now 15-year-old daughter's life. So both he and Linnea have a lot to navigate when she moves in after surviving a school shooting in Ohio. All lives converge and are transformed when a wealthy widow establishes a hazily conceived philanthropic organization. Thompson infuses her characters' bizarre, terrifying, and instructive misadventures with hilarity and profundity as she considers the wild versus the civilized, the survival of the richest, how and why we help and fail each other, and what it might mean to build an authentic spiritual self. Thompson is at her tender and scathing best in this tale of yearning, paradox, and hope. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Thompson attracts more readers with each book; a strong publicity push and critical acclaim should carry The Humanity Project to the top.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist