The Financial Lives of the Poets Summary
Jess Walter

The Financial Lives of the Poets Overview

Jess Walter's novel The Financial Lives of the Poets is a fiction comedy chronicling the struggles of a family man in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. Matt Prior is a unemployed business reporter with mounting financial issues and a wife who is slowly drifting away from him. A chance encounter with a few youths at a 7/11 who offer him drugs causes Matt to hatch a plan to sell marijuana in order to make enough money to get him and his family back on their feet. The Financial Lives of the Poets explores themes of masculinity, modernity, the pratfalls of pride, and the zeitgeist of post-recession America.