I revisited this one because I was going to read his new novel, beautiful Ruins. Maybe the first time i read this it seemed more poignant. I did not have that same feeling the second time through. In fact I only got to something like page 90 before turning off my reader and moving on the the next title. The whole premise of the first scene and the details that he brings to the fore front just don't seem important or for that matter interesting.

Matt Prior's life is running right off the rails. He thinks his wife is having an affair, he's about to lose his house, he haunts the 711 at night when he can't sleep...and suddenly he gets the bright idea to be a drug dealer.
I loved Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins and this book had some of the same qualities...Jess likes his characters to redeem themselves and so do I. I find that very satisfying in a book! I found this book less interesting than Ruins because it focuses on just the one character and it's more focused on his life as it falls apart (Ruins being more about turning your life around) but Matt is an appealing character even if you feel like he's a bit of an idiot. You root for him, and that to me is a key characteristic of novels I want to read. You'd be surprised how many novels have not one character you relate to or root for (I seem to have read a few of them in a row). I enjoyed this but I found Beautiful Ruins more appealling and poetically written.

"My dreams tend to be either so obscure as to seem random, or so obviously connected to my unconsciousness that it's embarrassing - as if even my hidden depths lack depth"

***

"So you're like a businessman and a writer?"
"I covered business for the newspaper for eighteen years"
"And you write what, poems and shit?"
"… mostly shit…."

***

"The financial lives of the poet" is a wonderful book that covers so many different aspects of modern family life and the pressure put by society nowadays, that every person will recognise at least one part of it. All at once funny, sad, worrying, painfully familiar, hilarious and completely mad; this book is about love and jealousy, about money and professional dreams, about family life and taking care of ones parents, about drugs and crime, about right and wrong and about so much more.

We meet protagonist Matt, a journalist covering business news, once happily married to Lisa, father of two wonderful boys who are being sent to private school, owner of the dream-house in a nice neighbourhood as well as a $35.000 car, with the according debts attached, when his best days are obviously behind him. Having lost his job, he decided to start his own journalist- enterprise, "poetfolio.com" . Or as Matt puts it "I shall now quit my job and endanger my family's future to follow my youthful dream of writing stock news and tips in pedestrian, amateurish verse". Needless to say this idea was not the start of a booming business, yet of a fast growing pile of debts and missed payments, to the point where Matt and his family risk loosing their house, and the rest of their luxurious lives…

This seems to be the starting point and setting for a series of unhappy events in Matt's life: his wife Lisa is mad at him for not providing any money for her shopping sprees and to send the boys to private school and seeks comfort with her long time boyfriend from high school. Matt's dad is demented and brightens up their lives repeating the same thing over and over again. The job hunting is quite going as well as expected either.

In a desperate attempt to save his house, his family and everything he holds dear, Matt resorts to something drastic to raise money quickly; a decision that will get him into more trouble than he ever imagined.


Even though some of the story twists are kind of far fetched and way out there, this really is a good book. Lots of humour and very realistic situations and dialogues. I loved how he took revenge on Lisa's old boyfriend (something that is "not done", but everyone at least thinks about), how he takes care of his dad, etc. In between we can read some "financial poems" which are actually quite funny.

Job well done by Jess Walter!

I laughed out loud more times than I could count reading this book. There are some great moments here. Worth reading. Thanks for the recommendation Tabitha.

What can be more poetic than economics? Capitalist economics determine who lives and who dies, how one lives, what we do with our lives. You can tell what someone’s life looks like by a glance at a checkbook ledger or credit score. Economics is the thread that creates the fabric of our society. The base of every war and prejudice. The cause of racism, sexism, and religious discrimination (though they frame economics as the side effect). We are the ants and money is the sand, the food — what else matters in an ant farm?

The Financial Life of Poets brilliantly describes the 2008 Financial Crisis (to someone who lived through it but didn’t really understand it). The more complicated and strung out money is, the more exploitative. And brilliantly, the nationwide legalization of weed probably could’ve helped dig us out of that mess sooner.

Although not as Marxist as I may wish, the novel toes a brilliant cusp — the Jones’s don’t exist, only marketing that filters out to creditors and debt collectors.

And it feels like we’re back where we were in 2008 now in 2020/2021… ominous, but at least we can give it a bit of a laugh!

What can be more poetic than economics? Capitalist economics determine who lives and who dies, how one lives, what we do with our lives. You can tell what someone’s life looks like by a glance at a checkbook ledger or credit score. Economics is the thread that creates the fabric of our society. The base of every war and prejudice. The cause of racism, sexism, and religious discrimination (though they frame economics as the side effect). We are the ants and money is the sand, the food — what else matters in an ant farm?

The Financial Life of Poets brilliantly describes the 2008 Financial Crisis (to someone who lived through it but didn’t really understand it). The more complicated and strung out money is, the more exploitative. And brilliantly, the nationwide legalization of weed probably could’ve helped dig us out of that mess sooner.

Although not as Marxist as I may wish, the novel toes a brilliant cusp — the Jones’s don’t exist, only marketing that filters out to creditors and debt collectors.

And it feels like we’re back where we were in 2008 now in 2020/2021… ominous, but at least we can give it a bit of a laugh!

This book was amusing in an offbeat way. It also is very "Spokane" in that if you are from Spokane (the author's hometown) you pick up on aspects of the book that reflect the city that other readers may miss.

It is a snarky, amusing, slightly depressing, book to read but also very well written. I wanted to shake the main character because most of his troubles were of his own making by trying to hide that his house was in foreclosure. He put the distance between wife and him because of the hiding of the financial difficulties. I guess some people do strange things when desperate for money...like sell pot as this character tried to do.

The dementia suffering Grandfather was a very cool character. His flashes of normalcy and dementia spurred actions were both sad and humorous at the same time. All the characters were well written.

I enjoyed this book and may check out books in the future by this author.

Similar premise to Weeds and Breaking Bad. Well-written enough to get me excited about [b:Beautiful Ruins|11447921|Beautiful Ruins|Jess Walter|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338161553s/11447921.jpg|16381755].

This is one of the best pieces of fiction I've read in a while. The writing is interesting, impressive, and at times humorous. The poetry is generally amusing, particularly the poem about mothers' choice of undergarments. Overall, it was simply very clever. My only complaint is that the narrator/main character is almost pathetically stupid regarding his life choices at times, but I suppose that may be fairly realistic when you find yourself so overwhelmed by financial, familial, and social despair.