The Good Parts

The novel alternates between two timelines, weaving a love story set in the past with a present-day narrative of loss, memory, and the desire to forget. At its center are Rose Martin and Landon Calloway, whose marriage was shattered by grief.

The story opens with a framing premise: Landon, a 33-year-old with an extraordinary memory, has sent a letter to his estranged wife in Scotland, hoping their shared history will change her mind about leaving him. While the letter was in transit, Rose took "the forgetting pill," a drug that erases all personal memories and floods the taker with lasting hope and optimism. Her reply is written not by Rose but by her "other," the new identity that emerged after the pill. It is signed with her maiden name, Martin, rather than their married name, Calloway, confirming they are strangers now.

In alternating chapters, the novel traces the history Rose chose to erase. As a teenager, she lost her father, James, to a degenerative memory disease, likely Alzheimer's, while her mother withdrew into alcohol addiction. Rose arrives alone at a small liberal arts college in Vermont and meets her assigned roommate, Poppy West, a wealthy, blunt young woman who becomes her closest friend. At a freshman party, Rose meets Landon, a tall, awkward twin who points out the lipstick on her teeth. Despite the clumsy introduction, she feels an immediate spark. During a theater club initiation, she finds Landon and they leap hand in hand into a campus pond. Rose feels baptized into a bolder version of herself.

In the present, Landon shares Rose's reply with his best friend, Conor, a medical fellow. Conor urges him to see the pill as a fresh start, but Landon resolves to win Rose's heart again. He flies to Edinburgh despite a severe fear of flying. At the airport, Poppy is waiting. She has been living in Edinburgh to watch over new Rose, per a note Rose left before taking the pill. Poppy reveals that Rose is happy, learning to paint, and dating a Scottish man named Graham. She demands Landon leave. He refuses.

In the past, Rose and Landon's relationship deepens. Rose discovers a passion for theater, using characters as vessels for her unprocessed grief. Her father dies during freshman year, and she delivers a eulogy centered on the word "apricity," the warmth of the sun in winter, a concept he taught her. That night, she and Landon exchange their first "I love you." She visits his family for Thanksgiving and is overwhelmed by the warmth and traditions she never had. After graduation, they move to New York, where Rose endures a crushing year of failed auditions. Landon proposes with his grandmother's star sapphire ring, and Rose says yes. On their wedding day, Poppy walks Rose down the aisle. Rose vows: "If I should leave this world before you, I promise to always be waiting for you here. In this moment" (185).

In the present, Landon uses the alias Jamie Burke to enroll in a life drawing class at Rose's university. The model who steps into the spotlight is Rose. During a break, she approaches, compliments his sketches, and assumes he is a fellow pill-taker. Landon confirms the lie. Rose introduces him to Graham and invites "Jamie" to a weekly dinner for pill-takers, where members discuss what the body remembers that the mind does not. Over the following days, Rose takes Landon hiking at sunrise and to Mnemosyne, a bookshop named for the Greek goddess of memory, where she works part-time. Landon reads aloud to her from Moby-Dick, and their thighs touch on a chaise. During a ghost tour of Edinburgh's underground vaults, Rose reaches for his hand. Something is shifting between them, though Rose develops troubling nosebleeds of increasing severity.

The past timeline continues through the milestones of their marriage. When a pregnancy test comes back positive, Rose has a powerful sense of knowing. Labor is traumatic, requiring an emergency delivery with forceps. A girl is born. They name her Cordelia, after the King Lear character Rose's father had almost named her. Moments after the baby is placed on Rose's chest, she hemorrhages and nearly dies.

Rose survives but struggles with severe postpartum depression, unable to bond with Cordelia. She begins therapy and antidepressants. Over months, the fog lifts and she falls deeply in love with her daughter, but her marriage stagnates as she gives all her emotional reserves to the baby. On a trip to Cape Cod, Rose breaks down, unable to calm Cordelia when others can. Landon confronts her, and Rose admits that during her hemorrhage, she left her body and felt an exquisite nothingness beyond pain, and sometimes she can still feel it. When Rose later discovers Landon's emotional affair with a colleague named Olivia, the forgetting pill whispers in her ear for the first time, but she dismisses it.

They attempt reconciliation through couples counseling. On a spring day, they take Cordelia to the park. In the car, Rose reaches for Landon's hand. The light turns green. He does not see. A truck strikes them from behind. Cordelia has an epidural hematoma, a fatal brain bleed. There is nothing the doctors can do. After Cordelia's death, Rose lies next to the empty crib, cycling between waking and dreams in which her daughter is alive. The siren song of the pill returns. This time, she listens.

In the present, Rose and Landon sleep together at her flat. While she sleeps, Landon discovers her drafting table covered in unfinished sketches: all portraits of the same half-formed face. He recognizes the likeness of Cordelia. Rose wakes screaming, covered in blood from a massive nosebleed, and is rushed to the hospital. Graham discovers Landon's true identity. Rose survives surgery. When Landon enters her room, he tells her their story and proposes they take the pill together, starting over with his account as a guide. Rose opens her eyes, her memories restored. She responds: "It's not our story if it's not the whole story, Landon" (299). She never blamed him for the accident; she left because she could not live without Cordelia. She reveals that new Rose did not draw faces until the day she met "Jamie"; his presence triggered buried memories, causing the dangerous nosebleeds. Conor, arriving from Boston, confirms that some pill patients have died when suppressed trauma breaches the drug's effects.

Rose tells Landon she will take the pill again but will write her other a letter that includes him this time, with enough truth for her other to understand. She chose August 20, their wedding anniversary, because she thought tearing the fabric of the universe at that moment might let him always find her there. She asks him to let her go and to finish their story. At the airport, Poppy meets Landon a final time, gives him Rose's new letter, and tells him she forgives him for not being what Rose needed when he was broken, too.

In a brief subsequent chapter, a woman wakes in a Boston hotel room with no memories, finds a letter telling her she is safe, and feels radiantly alive. She plans to move somewhere beautiful and old, with steeples and spires, to create art. The cycle begins again. In the final chapter, Landon sits in a lemon grove in Cinque Terre, Italy, writing their story. He resolves that if he never writes "THE END," they will always be out there, somewhere, beginning.