Can love survive if only one person remembers? Evann Normandin joins Book Gang to share how The Good Parts explores memory, healing, and the cost of letting go.
What if you could forget your greatest heartache—would you do it? Today we’re joined by Evann Normandin, whose debut, The Good Parts, is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on memory, trauma, and a love story that refuses to be erased.
When Rose takes a pill to erase her most painful memories, she loses not only her grief but every trace of the love she once shared with Landon. As Landon tries to rekindle their connection, they both discover that love and memory are never so easily erased. Evann draws from her studies in traumatic memory—and a real-life love letter—to ask one unforgettable question: Can love survive if only one person remembers it?
In this week’s episode, we discuss:
📚 Writing, Rejection, and the Road to Publication: Evann shares the long journey behind her “overnight success”—from trunk novels to querying, agent switches, and finally, a book deal that went to auction. We’ll talk about the resilience every writer needs, and why every story—even the ones that don’t sell—matters.
📚NetGalley Insights: How early reader feedback shaped the marketing and genre positioning of The Good Parts, and what Evann learned from reader expectations, especially when penning a love story.
📚 Memory, Trauma, and Healing: Evann reveals how her academic fascination with traumatic memory shaped the speculative premise of The Good Parts, and why she believes stories can help us bear witness to each other’s pain and joy—even when the truth is fragmented or rewritten.
FREE BONUS BOOK LIST: This week’s bonus book list features18 Books Where Memory Shapes the Story. From forgetting pills and amnesia to the complex world of dementia, memory takes readers on some mind-bending adventures! Patrons of the show will receive a printable book list to take to their local library and a bonus spoiler episode with Evann Normandin as we discuss The Good Parts ending.
Meet Evann Normandin
Evann Normandin is a writer with a career in educational publishing. She studied English and Theatre at Middlebury College, then earned her MSc in modern and postmodern literature at the University of Edinburgh. After a stint as a theatre critic for BroadwayWorld in Washington, DC, she moved to Massachusetts, where she lives in a small, quirky town that inspires her daily. When she’s not working or writing, she’s exploring New England with her husband and son. The Good Parts is now available on store shelves.
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FREE BONUS BOOK LIST:18 Books Where Memory Shapes the Story
Book Talk, etc: Appalachian Authors Episode
The Good Parts by Evann Normandin
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown
The Last Five Years
Severance
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind
Abby Offsides by Anna McCallie
Assassin’s Anonymous by Rob Hart
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Cathy Caruth
Grand Central’s Book Club Guide
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