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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.
- Sales Rank: #1027842 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-12
- Released on: 2015-05-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.05" w x 6.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Review
“It’s hard for a fiction writer to know how to engage the present American moment. This powder-keg culture might seem like rich material, but dramatizing it is harder than it appears. Greenfeld is one of the writers we can watch trying to figure it out.” (Jonathan Dee, Harper's)
“Greenfeld has produced a fascinating novel about life in the age of economic uncertainty. It’s a colorful tale of characters living on the edge combined with sharp social insights.” (Walter Isaacson)
“The Subprimes holds up a funhouse-mirror version of ourselves and our era. Karl Taro Greenfeld has written a masterful, viciously funny satire of our times, one that we ignore at our peril.” (Ben Fountain)
“A little Occupy, a little Ed Abbey, and a good deal of hope for solidarity in a screwed-up world -- The Subprimes is a superhero story for the rest of us.” (Bill McKibben)
“Sharply observed and engrossing, The Subprimes depicts a future that is simultaneously absurd...and plausible. It would be too scary to read if it weren’t so entertaining.” (Edan Lepucki)
“With sharp and indicting fury and humor, profound compassion, deep respect, and literary prowess, Greenfeld has written a scorching, twenty-first-century Grapes of Wrath that perfectly captures our time’s suffering and potentially apocalyptic greed and folly.” (Booklist (starred review))
“Set in a meticulously, terrifyingly imagined all-too-near future, The Subprimes is a potent cocktail of North American myth, equal parts John Steinbeck and Margaret Atwood, with a dash of benzene.” (William Gibson)
“The Subprimes admirably -- amazingly -- superimposes all the populist instincts of The Grapes of Wrath onto a dystopian future that is all too visible from our current moment. Greenfeld’s compassion and understanding -- this novel’s beating heart -- are what grabbed me most.” (Charles Bock)
“Greenfeld has a tendency to lean toward parody in his satiric style, but here he employs enough authenticity to terrify, enough black humor to disarm the story’s inherent pessimism, and a surprising admiration for faith in its myriad forms.” (Kirkus)
From the Back Cover
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 have lost them jobs and make them unemployable. Jobless and without assets, they have 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 Californian 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 but falling fast. Eventually they discover a small settle- ment 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 may just 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 darkly funny comedy about paradise lost and found, as well as the value of credit, economic policy, and the meaning of family.
About the Author
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.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Greenfeld has created a dark, funhouse mirror reflection of our current world
By Bookreporter
Some people may have already forgotten about Occupy Wall Street, but Karl Taro Greenfeld certainly hasn’t. In his biting, satirical second novel --- dedicated to the 99% --- he’s envisioned a near-future America where the gap between the haves and have-nots has become a chasm. The migrant poor, or subprimes, live in squatter’s camps called Ryanvilles or are shipped off to modern-day debtors’ prisons known as “Credit Rehabilitation Centers.” Virtually all government functions have been privatized; one character’s son attends the Subway Fresh Take Paul Revere Charter Middle School. Minimum wage? Outlawed under the National Right to Work Act. Environmental regulations? Abolished. It’s an exaggerated but not entirely unbelievable version of the current political and economic landscape, where the 1% just keep getting richer while the rest of America suffers.
Perhaps the biggest casualty of “this climactic age of American capitalism” is political dissent, which is virtually nonexistent. The few who don’t like the way things are going have either retreated into cynicism or have, as in the case of one character, “withdrawn, totally, into her own self, via yoga and juice cleanses and shaman therapy and picayune specificity of the foods she will put into her body.” The subprimes, who have the most reason to revolt, are totally cowed. Their main concerns are avoiding the credit police and scraping out a meager existence as day laborers for powerful corporations like those owned by Dottie and Dorrie Pepper, twin sisters who are like the evil siblings of the Koch brothers.
Still, a few subprimes hold out hope for a better life, coming together to build a tiny settlement among the abandoned tract homes that dot the Nevada desert. Valence has communal agriculture, free schools and dance parties. And soon, it has an unlikely resident messiah. Sagram has “been wandering her whole life,” ever since fleeing a foster home as an adolescent. She rides a motorcycle, dresses in white leathers, and is unsure of her race and exact birthday (“Thirty?” she responds, when someone asks her age). Most suspiciously, she doesn’t have a credit score. But her apartness gives her the freedom to speak truth to power. “She said she was everything, all of it, people and countries and ideas and dreams all rolled into one so that she could dream bigger and talk louder and fight harder than all the rest.”
Sagram’s foil is Pastor Roger, a celebrity preacher whose mega-church has taken over what used to be the Dallas Cowboys stadium. In his sermons he spreads an extreme version of the prosperity gospel, twisting the tenets of Christianity to serve capitalism. He urges his followers to “fight the forces of repression and regulation and socialism and progressivism who would seek to usurp God’s will by cutting off his invisible hand.” Sagram, in contrast, offers a return to a purer form of faith. Her message is not explicitly religious, yet her words seem more in line in with Biblical teachings than Pastor Roger’s sermons. “We do not want to fight --- we only ask of the government to be treated as all people should be treated,” she says when an army of private security forces arrives to evict the residents of Valence.
Given the dystopian setting of THE SUBPRIMES, it seems like the novel should be bleak and depressing, and at times it is. The dozens of whales who have beached themselves on the shores of both New York and California serve as a powerful, if obvious, sign that all is not right with the planet. But the novel’s serious message is leavened with humor and hope. Greenfeld takes great joy in envisioning the logical yet absurd conclusions of certain current trends in American politics and culture. A preteen boy brings a switchblade comb to school and is sent to “Shooters,” an afterschool program for violent youth. The super-rich zoom around on elevated highways and private jets, while the impoverished majority are stuck in gridlock on crumbling roads or flying across the country in “upright class” (no beverage service, naturally). You can call an ambulance, but the paramedic will check your credit score before he takes you to the hospital.
Greenfeld has created a dark, funhouse mirror reflection of our current world --- a sobering vision of what America might look like if certain right-wing elements had their way. Yet he’s optimistic enough to predict a way out of this mess, showing how a return to traditional community and mutual support might break “the fever spell of greed.” We may not be living in the world of THE SUBPRIMES just yet, but Greenfeld’s novel is a pointed warning that such a future may not be all that far off.
Reviewed by Megan Elliott
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Greenfeld's comic cli-fi with serious undertones continues an enduring and endearing USA and UK comic literary tradition
By Amazon Customer
'The Subprimes' is an American comic 'cli-fi' novel, with legs, in the tradition of Nathaniel Rich's equally comic "Odds Against Tomorrow" (and Ian McEwan's comic UK cli-fi novel "Solar") and it's both funny and penetratingly serious. Greenfeld is the son of a Hollywood screenwriter and a Japanese novelist and was blessed with the writerly genes he inherited from both his parents. This comic novel is a light comedy about weighty subjects: wealth inequality, environmental devastation, the erosion of democratic representation, the creation of a hereditary moneyed class, and the disastrous false consciousness of the American populace, as one pundit put it.
It’s a road-trip novel (actually, it’s several road-trip novels, having many point-of-view characters) set in a near-future plutocratic, climate-wracked America. With a deeply-focused mind and a comic sense of humor, Greenfeld has mined "The Subprimes" as a kind of Swiftian satire and where America is today, or will be in a rapidly-approaching near future. Like Nathaniel Rich's 2013 cli-fi satire "Odds Against Tomorrow," which almost single-handedly set the cli-fi genre on its meteoric rise after a NPR radio segment lit up social media from coast to coast, Greenfeld's comic take (with serious undertones) is a must-read, continuing an enduring and endearing American and British comic literary tradition and this time in the cli-fi mode.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Some things are funny because they're way overdone
By C. Schiavone
Some things are funny because they're way overdone, but that's always a difficult thing to get right. "Subprimes" envisions a dystopian America where conservative politics have gotten just about everything they've always wanted. Environmental regulations have been stripped away, labor protections reduced to nothing, the schools privatised. There's no health care if you have no money, and the hospitals run your credit score before they even look at you. The main bad guys are some preacher and two stand-ins for the Koch brothers called the Pepper sisters. And everybody who lost their home in the subprime crisis are homeless and living squats called "Ryanvilles". And subprimes keep moving around all the time because they can be arrested and thrown into debtor's prison at any time.
It's a scathing indictment of modern conservatism. I think of myself a pretty liberal, so I'm just fine with that aspect. It's just by making the conservatives so extreme, they become straw men, they're not believable characters. Maybe the author was going for the "way-over-the-top" satire style, but for my tastes, never quite made it there. It just got too preachy.
Still liked the book, though.
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