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    The Subprimes: A Novel
    The Subprimes: A Novel
    The Subprimes: A Novel
    Ebook329 pages6 hours

    The Subprimes: A Novel

    By Karl Taro Greenfeld

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A wickedly funny dystopian parody set in a financially apocalyptic future America, from the critically acclaimed author of Triburbia.

    In a future America that feels increasingly familiar, you are your credit score. Extreme wealth inequality has created a class of have-nothings: Subprimes. Their bad credit ratings make them unemployable. Jobless and without assets, they’ve walked out on mortgages, been foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford a fixed address. Fugitives who must keep moving to avoid arrest, they wander the globally warmed American wasteland searching for day labor and a place to park their battered SUVs for the night.

    Karl Taro Greenfeld’s trenchant satire follows the fortunes of two families whose lives reflect this new dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-financially-fittest America. Desperate for work and food, a Subprime family has been forced to migrate east, hoping for a better life. They are soon joined in their odyssey by a writer and his family—slightly better off, yet falling fast. Eventually, they discover a small settlement of Subprimes who have begun an agrarian utopia built on a foreclosed exurb. Soon, though, the little stability they have is threatened when their land is targeted by job creators for shale oil extraction.

    But all is not lost. A hero emerges, a woman on a motorcycle—suspiciously lacking a credit score—who just may save the world.

    In The Subprimes, Karl Taro Greenfeld turns his keen and unflinching eye to our country today—and where we may be headed. The result is a novel for the 99 percent: a darkly funny comedy about paradise lost and found, the value of credit, economic policy, and the meaning of family.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 12, 2015
    ISBN9780062132444
    The Subprimes: A Novel
    Author

    Karl Taro Greenfeld

    Karl Taro Greenfeld is the author of seven previous books, including the novel Triburbia and the acclaimed memoir Boy Alone. His award-winning writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Best American Short Stories 2009 and 2013, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. Born in Kobe, Japan, he has lived in Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and currently lives in Pacific Palisades, California, with his wife, Silka, and their daughters, Esmee and Lola.

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    • 4/5
      More Troubling Prescient Each Year

      Greenfeld's satirical, often cynical, novel imagines what might become of the U.S. if the most rabid proponents of unfettered capitalism have their way. Needless to say, for the vast majority of people, even, ironically, the handful of beneficiaries, the endgame is quite ugly: massive poverty, perpetual uncertainty and fear, a complete distortion of institutions and values, and a devastated environment. Yet, in the midst of the dystopian suffering and chaos, Greenfeld finds humor because, let's face it, we can laugh at our own stupidity, as long as it is a good long arms distant.

      In the not too far off future, the one-percent have gotten their way. They control all the resources, which they exploit ruthlessly. Government, services outsourced and officials reduced to vassals, kowtows to the elites' demands. Religion functions as cheerleading flimflam. The former middle-class roams the land in search of pennies, worse off than serfs of old as they and their families have become rootless wanders. And the world both floods on the coasts and sizzles in the center, an endless wasteland of ravagement.

      The novel follows the lives of three families, a mysterious motorcycle-riding woman, an ersatz preacher, and a pair of self-righteous capitalists. Jeb, Bailey, and children Tom and Vanessa, stand-ins for the middle-class, want to live decently, instead of as they do in hastily organized and as quickly rousted Ryanvilles (Paul, perhaps?). Arthur, Gemma, and daughters Ginny and Fanny, once enjoyed the lifestyle of the elite, until Arthur was exposed as a fraudulent charlatan, costing his family everything (but also revealing to them, minus Arthur, what counts in life). Richie, ex Anya, children Ronin and Jinx, are a mix of the cynical (husband), new age (wife), and neglected (children). Rounding out the cast are Pastor Roger, embodying everything most people dislike about shallow televangelists, and the Pepper sisters (Koch brothers in drag?), major capitalists who might just believe in everything they have done. And the star of the novel, the one woman who unites a community, who leads a revolution of sorts against the system, and who proves to be something more than earthbound, a mystic with some extraordinary powers that manifest in the final pages of the novel. All converge on a resurrected community in the Nevada desert as the Pepper sisters prepare to launch fracking to a whole new level of despoilment.

      Surprisingly, though it might strike you as sounding a bit cartoonish, Greenfeld's a skillful enough writer to make most of the tale compelling. Categorize this one under "best watch what you wish for.”
    • 4/5
      Ok, so, this is another novel about a dystopian future, but this one really hits close to home. This does not feel like a distant future and it feels quite familiar: in this not-so-distant future, climate change hits hard, the real estate collapse seems irreversible, and right-wing libertarian politics has prevailed. As a result, people are defined by their credit score, creating a stratification system with "sub-primes" at the bottom, those with low credit score, having sometimes abandoned their homes whose mortgage they could no longer afford. At the top are the financial class, living in gated communities and getting ready to move to sanctuaries (isolated islands - literal or metaphorical - of wealth, away from the social disintegration).
      The subprimes, on the other hand, live from Ryanvilles (get it?) to Ryanvilles. It has a taste of Grapes of Wrath and the dustbowl 2.0. The American economy is now fully privatized and voucherized. Right work is the law. Collective bargaining has been eliminated. And the American economy has switched from service / consumer-based, to energy-producing, mainly, through fracking.
      The novel follows a set of familiar character on both sides of the social class divide. At the top, the Pepper sisters (looking a lot like the Koch brothers), energy tycoons, a megachurch pastor who seems a mix of Joel Osteen (prosperity gospel, Christianity capitalism) and Glenn Beck.
      At the bottom, the drifter Sagram and a few others. Stuck in the middle, a couple of other families either up or down the social ladder. The confrontation is inevitable.
      So far so good. The only thing I really, REALLY, did not like was the mystical, Sagram as healer thing. This was completely unncessary and kinda ruined the end of the story for me. Hence the 4 stars (instead of 5 I would otherwise have given).
      That being said, it's a page-turner and a good cautionary tale.

    Book preview

    The Subprimes - Karl Taro Greenfeld

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