The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter
He may never squeeze onto a Bestseller List overrun with vampires, wizards, hired guns, and unlucky survivors of an apocalypse, but his narrative and prose unspool beautifully and deserve a larger readership. He places his characters in the wake of a national tragedy – the 9/11 attacks or current financial crisis – drills for humor and discovers everyone’s humanity. He writes fully developed characters and the kind of sentences where, after having read them, you find yourself staring into the distance, shaking your head, marveling at their insight. Luckily, I can recommend other writers like Jess Walter, so that when he’s between novels you can check out the likes of Andrew Miller, Benjamin Kunzel, Mark Costello, ZZ Packer, David Wong Louie, Colson Whitehead, Joshua Ferris, Miranda July, Sam Lipsyte, Andrew Sean Greer, David Ebershoff, Lorrie Moore, and Tim Winton. Among them, there is only one story about zombies.
~Cory Lenz~
