A review by lorayne
The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

5.0

I really enjoyed this book! Jess Walter has quite the knack of writing a story in which you should be so angry with the main character, but because of the wit and sarcasm of the protagonist, you are laughing out loud most of the time instead. The book is about Matthew Prior, a news reporter who has been laid off. He is on a downward spiral heading toward losing everything in his life--house and wife included. This story is very current, focusing on the mortgage crisis, as well as the death of the newspaper. It wasn't till the end of the book where I finally became so irritated with all of Matthew's choices that I wasn't laughing as much. Overall, the story showed that there's light at the end of any tunnel so long as we choose to better ourselves, even if it's after a number of failures that don't seem repairable.