I had heard good things about The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter. It got some buzz on the 2009 year-ends lists (though on the longer lists) and when I happened to be prepping my own 2009 Best Books post, it was listed as a "if you liked this one, you'll probably like that one" suggestion for my book of the year, Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You. If I needed any more reason than that, I had also heard good things about Walter's earlier book, The Zero, and that leans right into my tendency to ignore the book I hear good things about and read the author's latest instead... plus, as Todd would comically say, "it sounds like a book you would read."
Right off the bat, I could see why this book was compared to Tropper. It had a bold and brash style and protagonist Matt Prior's life seemed be similarly unraveling in mid-life crisis mode to that of Judd Foxman. The big difference in this book is that Matt's wounds are more self-inflicted and this ends up more of a time-sensitive take of the current economic downturn and the national wake-up call after years of bad/irresponsible behavior, than Tropper's family-centric circus. Honestly, I am not sure how Walter got this book written and published so quickly.
While I enjoyed this book from the get-go, I have to admit, for quite some time, I unfavorably compared it to Tropper and when Matt scrambles for ways to back his life off the edge of the cliff he takes a turn that seemed way too much of a sub-plot from the Showtime series Weeds. But just when I thought I knew where things were headed, Walter surprised me.
I won't reveal the meaning of the title of the book, but it all makes sense and is no where near as cryptic as one would think. Also, here are so many little gems here from raising kids in today's world to caring for an aging (simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking) to one's "online" life. I shared this quote appropriately enough on Facebook about that very thing, as Matt speak of his wife's increasing time spent on the computer and her smartphone:
...but I worry that what she's really looking for is not the people she once knew, but the her she once was, some happier version of herself living a better life than the one she has with me.
Ultimately, Poets broke out from the burdens I placed on it and ended a streak of books that had not particularly wow'd me and through the snark turned into quite a heart-felt story of redemption and re-evaluation (via quotes/thoughts like the one above).
Star-rating-wise, this was another whole-numbers struggle. I gave it 4 stars on GoodReads, though on that initial review would have bumped it up to 4.5 stars... though this week+ later re-visit makes me ponder a true bump up to elusive 5 stars. Regardless, this is a book I quite enjoyed!
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