From Wunderkind to Washed Up

The artist: Novelist and writer Benjamin Anastas’ recent memoir, Too Good To Be True, has won him good press and glowing reviews, but it’s safe to say Anastas hoped he’d never have to write it. The brutally honest book chronicles his fall from promising young novelist to a broke, overwhelmed, and desperate single father and divorcé. It’s uncomfortably intimate as it examines failure and financial duress as well as Anastas’ complicated, larger-than-life family, but even with its unflinching candor, Too Good To Be True is ultimately hopeful and even optimistic, especially as it extends to Anastas’ relationship with his son.