Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

Overview

In this new novel by ReLit award–winning, Leacock-nominated writer Andrew Kaufman, Charlie eschews the usual avenues of mid-life crisis—sportscars, mistresses—and instead seeks meaning in the least likely of places: small claims court. There, he struggles to understand what’s gone wrong in his marriage, his career as a writer, and his relationship with his two young children. With small observations, subtle investigations, and the constant pursuit of small-scale justice, Charlie attempts to rebuild his faith in humanity through the framework of a court system that won’t let you sue for damages above twenty thousand dollars. This is Andrew Kaufman minus the magic realism and with a big dose of tenderness for the frailties of the heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781926743950
Publisher:	Invisible Publishing
Publication date:	05/15/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	383 KB

About the Author

Andrew Kaufman lives and writes in Toronto. He is the author of international bestseller All My Friends are Superheroes, The Waterproof Bible, ReLit Award–winner The Tiny Wife, and Born Weird, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail and was shortlisted for the Leacock award.

Editorial Reviews

05/15/2017
The brooding narrator of Kaufman’s (Born Weird) middling novel is nearly 50 and taking stock of his life. Introspective to a fault and drawn to merciless self-assessment, Charlie does not like what he finds. His job is meaningless; marriage has become strife. He’s a petty man filled with simmering rage, and feels he has “lost faith in this world” and become a cranky, bitter curmudgeon stagnating in a “state of empathy fatigue.” He believes he has squandered real talents on his job writing industrial manuals, achieved bare mediocrity, and settled into a glum disposition of cynical pessimism. His fourth novel, meant to revive a once-promising career, is (as Kaufman shows over four unnecessary chapters) a “literary disasterpiece.” Hoping to restore a withered “empathetic nature,” the narrator uses family vacation time for himself alone. On an errand to an ugly municipal building in the outer reaches of Toronto, he stumbles upon uglier proceedings in small claims court and returns to reflect on other cases. All the while he remains deep in thought. Despite the novelty of the narrator’s compulsive pit stops at court, Kaufman cannot fully overcome the sheer familiarity of his subject matter: a white professional guy facing a middle-age crisis stemming from a life of compromises, failed dreams, and potential never achieved. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Fantastical, quirky, full of wordplay, and laugh-out-loud funny.... With humour, sensitivity and insight, Kaufman reveals how we all spin fantasies to survive the setbacks in life. He creates extraordinary, unreal scenarios in which he is able [to] poignantly illuminate the very real pitfalls and pain of human connection."--The Chronicle Herald on Born Weird

From the Publisher