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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Walter scores knockout with ‘Financial Lives’

Jess Walter’s black-comic novel “The Financial Lives of the Poets” (Harper, 304 pages, $25.99, on sale Tuesday) does plenty of things well, but let’s begin with the most important:

It conveys, with perfect pitch, the fear, the insecurity and the economic havoc wrought by the recession on America’s middle class. I’d go so far as to say that “The Financial Lives of the Poets” is America’s first great Great Recession novel.

Matthew Prior is a 40-ish family man in an unnamed medium-sized city that may or may not be Spokane. He quits his newspaper job to launch a massively ill-conceived Web site, poetfolio.com, which delivers business news in the form of … verse. To nobody’s surprise, it fails to thrive.

So he crawls back to his newspaper job only to get laid off. Prior’s home faces foreclosure, and he cannot find another job. After a chance encounter at his local 7-Eleven store, he decides to solve his financial problems by jumping into the marijuana business, “Weeds”-style, selling pot to his fellow middle-aged schlubs. Several plot twists ensue, completely un-telegraphed.

Nowhere have I seen such a pointed, funny and bitter depiction of how the recent Wall Street financial crisis trickled down to the average American family. This isn’t just the Main Street perspective, it’s the Front Porch USA perspective.

That’s reason enough to read this sharp and often outrageous satire. Yet “Financial Lives” accomplishes something even more impressive. It channels the innermost insecurities, jealousies and neuroses of the American family guy in a hilarious, painful and totally accurate way.

It ain’t pretty, and it certainly ain’t flattering to my fellow family guys. But it sure feels accurate.

“Financial Lives of the Poets” does this in part through its subplot. Not only is Matthew’s career in the tank, so is his marriage. He is convinced that Lisa, his wife and the mother of his two children, is carrying on an affair with a hunky high-school boyfriend. Large portions of the book detail that particular form of temporary insanity known as sexual jealousy.

Combine that with Prior’s equally insanity-producing money and career problems, and you have a full list of the things that guys tend to brood about in the dark of night:

• Not being able to provide for their kids.

• Losing their wives to another guy.

• Having no career.

• General fiscal failure.

So here’s what drives the book’s plot: Under the influence of these fears (and some high-grade pot), poor Matt Prior makes the worst possible decisions every step of the way.

This is the quickest and easiest read of Walter’s novels. His previous novel, “The Zero,” was a tough slog for some people, although it was a finalist for the National Book Award. “Financial Lives” is written in a breezier, lighter manner, and it is also, hands down, the funniest of his books.

Here are a few passages:

• (From Matt’s financial adviser, trying to explain the meaning of “scale down”) “I’m talking public school down, used-car, canned-food down, lower-middle-class down, Matt. Not 2004 upper-middle-class down – not eight-person Jacuzzi and lawn guy down – but 1977 generic-food buy-your-clothes-at-K-Mart-down.”

• (About an un-beloved editor) “The man loves journalism the way pedophiles love children.”

• (From a poem on the subject of laundering “mom’s underwear”) “We folded those things / like big American flags, / hats off, respectful / careful not to let them brush the ground.”

Yes, there is some poetry in “The Financial Lives of the Poets,” usually to demonstrate why poetfolio.com died a quick death. Walter’s literary inclinations are not completely submerged.

Yet the book’s ending – sweet, gentle, wise and hopeful – is what should make this Walter’s most widely appealing book.

Happy endings are not in literary fashion, but after putting up with Matt Prior’s downward spiral for a few hundred pages, a little hope feels like a particularly generous gift during tough times.