The Financial Lives of the Poets (2009)
"Darkly funny, surprisingly tender ... Walter ... has an abiding faith in the ability of human beings to be decent." -- LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Funny ... engaging ... a refreshing reminder that fiction remains a relevant, vital way to understand ourselves." -- (Portland) OREGONIAN
"A writer of uncommon talent ... (Walter) has packed "The Financial Lives of the Poets" with so much life and wry truth, all of it timely and topical." -- BLOOMBERG NEWS
"Wildly funny ... Jess Walter is a brilliant writer, one of the freshest new voices in American literature. His sentences snap with energy." -- DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"A deliciously antic tale of an American dream gone very sour ... sharp, wide-eyed, soulful ... a scathing indictment of our country's character and the 'ruined systems' we labor under." -- WASHINGTON POST
"The hero of Jess Walter's novel is like a stoned Humbert Humbert ... The funniest way-we-live-now book of the year.” -- TIME
"An apt and timely version of the current Great Recession ... dangerously astute." -- NEW YORK TIMES
“Compulsively readable ... and as beautifully written as anything you'll read this year.”--THE STRANGER (Seattle)
"Extremely funny ... very smart ... cleverly designed and immensely entertaining." -- CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
"Compassionate, witty and drawn from today's heartless world, it's a terrific book." -- ARIZONA REPUBLIC
"Very funny ... Matt Prior is a terrific narrator, and Walter gives him nimble prose." -- MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL
"Cynical yet warm ... a delight." -- ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S MUST-READ FALL BOOKS
"Gasp out loud funny ... Middle-class mayhem is just the best, at least in Walter's hands." -- NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
"A comic and gut-wrenching fable for these impecunious times" -- KANSAS CITY STAR
"A laugh-out-loud, desperately painful account of an economy and a marriage in meltdown." -- from Nick Hornby's Recommended Reading List in PEOPLE MAGAZINE
"The first great novel of the Great Recession ... a hilarious spiral of self-destruction." -- LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL
"(G)enuinely funny ... it's also a wise novel; a keenly observed dissection of the devolution of the American dream." -- EDMONTON JOURNAL
"Conveys, with perfect pitch, the fear, the insecurity and the economic havoc wrought by the recession on America's middle class." -- THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
"The novel has warmth, and its protagonist emerges as a bourgeois Everyman of the downturn." -- THE NEW YORKER
"Hilarious and timely ... bitter, funny and accurate ... Jess Walter's buoyant voice is a fresh pleasure." -- NEW WEST
"Hilarious and tragic … Walter is one of the foremost American fiction writers." -- NOVA SCOTIA CHRONICLE HERALD
"When it comes to explaining to me my own too often baffling nation, there's no one writing today whom I trust as completely as Jess Walter. His intelligence and sympathy and great wit inform every page--indeed every sentence--of his terrific new novel, The Financial Lives of the Poets." --Richard Russo, author of 'That Old Cape Magic'
"Jess Walter’s smart and big-hearted take on our bleak national moment is a welcome relief. The Financial Lives of the Poets is a rollicking fiction and an affecting family portrait, as well as a mordantly funny cautionary tale."
--Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land
"Who would think financial disaster could be so funny? But in The Financial Lives of the Poets, Jess Walter makes it so, and in the process shows why he's one of the best American writers working today ... a profound, and profoundly funny, book; this may well be the classic novel of our post-boom era."
--Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters of Che Guevara
"The Financial Lives of the Poets gives the perpetrators of our economic crisis (that is to say, us) a thrashing worthy of Trollope or Swift ... a virtuoso account of our new sub-prime America ... a hopped up, raucous, stunner of a novel with a hero who’s funny enough to make you weep for what we’ve lost."
--Whitney Terrell, author of The King of Kings County
"The talented Walter finds within his appealing if hapless narrator a perfect conduit for a timely story of personal and financial ruin ... a surprisingly heartwarming portrait of a good man trying to find his way back home."
--Booklist
"bitterly funny ... could not be more topical in its depiction of a leveraged to-the-hilt culture run amuck."
--Kirkus Reviews
The Zero (2006)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: THIS HAPPENED
'The Zero' could end up as the 'Catch 22' of 9/11 ... (with) its brilliant ironies, its deadpan truths, its insider smarts and its everyguy hero ... (Walter) elevates 'The Zero' above mere satire to Kafkaesque parable." -- The Wall Street Journal
"… a noir page-turner with powerful social commentary ... nails our often surreal post-9/11 world, where exploitation of the tragedy has become commonplace. Walter is an immensely talented writer." -- Washington Post Book World
"This is political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark. And the actual mystery rivets" -- Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)
"(A) brilliant tour de force ... the breakout novel of a brave and talented young writer." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Walter establishes himself as the current master of fractured U.S. history with all of the surrealism and black humor necessary for such an undertaking. Kafka would have to laugh." -- Library Journal
"A deliriously mordant political satire ... Walter's Helleresque take on a traumatic time ... carries off his dark and hilarious narrative with a grandly grotesque imagination." -- Publishers Weekly
"... a Kafkaesque splicing of the ordinary and the extraordinary ... The narrative and description throughout have a compelling hypnotic beauty … The Zero, a chronicle of the United States' disintegrating post-9/11 polity, is one of the funniest -- and darkest -- satires I've read in a quite a while." -- Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"Jess Walter's The Zero is a tense and compulsively readable roller-coaster ride fraught with psychological thrills, unanticipated dips and lurches and existential truths. The novel frightened and fascinated me in equal measures. Walter has written a neo-noirish masterpiece." --Wally Lamb
Citizen Vince
(2005)
ONE DAY YOU KNOW MORE DEAD PEOPLE THAN LIVE ONES.
"Maybe if Aaron Copland had written the score for a film noir starring the Marx Brothers there would be some prototype for Walter's fusion fiction, but he didn't and there isn't." Maureen Corrigan, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD.
"Mr. Walter's voice is too entertaining to turn flat. For readers who appreciate wry precision and expert timing, it may be enough to know that "Citizen Vince" arrives with sky-high praise from both Ken Bruen and Richard Russo, with whom Mr. Walters shares these qualities. For others, the book's fusion of humor, crime and politics may be recommendation enough." Janet Maslin, NEW YORK TIMES
"Admirably unpredictable ... engrossing ... Walter's best by far." KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Immensely entertaining ... wry social commentary ..." CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"This tale of unlikely redemption works because of Walter's virtuoso command of character and dialogue." BOOKLIST
"With a multitude of scruffy, likable characters and a hopping plot, the story moves along, at turns gritty, funny, poignant and, despite some bloody crimes, surprisingly charming." THE OREGONIAN
" The magic – and, yes, that’s the correct word – of “Citizen Vince” comes from the character of the protagonist and the setting he finds himself in." Dan Webster, THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
"It's been a long time since I read a book as eagerly, indeed greedily, as I read Citizen Vince." RICHARD RUSSO, Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Empire Falls" and "Straight Man."
"Citizen Vince is the book of 2005 for me. It's a stunning, moving
piece of work." KEN BRUEN, author of "The Killing of the Tinkers."
Land of the Blind
(2003)
THERE AREN'T EVEN NAMES FOR SOME OF THE CRIMES WE COMMIT
Land of the Blind, a March 2003 BookSense pick, is the story of Clark Mason, failed politician, entrepeneur and friend, who one day announces to the police that he wants to confess.
His entire life.
"Part mystery, part thriller and a large part literary novel … brilliantly written." CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
"Intelligently written, bittersweet and thoroughly absorbing … an affecting meditation on friendship and the price of betrayal. SEATTLE TIMES
"Hypnotically compelling." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"A mystery novel of uncommon depth. A haunting, deeply troubling novel." BOOKLIST (starred review)
Over Tumbled Graves
(2001)
CAROLINE MABRY WAS TRANSFIXED BY FALLING WATER
A 2001 New York Times Notable Book, Over Tumbled Graves is the story of Caroline Mabry, a police detective overwhelmed by the weight of her own life and by the evil that has descended upon her city.
“An original page-turner.” PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
“A disquieting first novel … incisive sensitivity.” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“Stunning … a splendid thriller.” THE PORTLAND OREGONIAN
“Suspenseful, challenging and intelligently written, Over Tumbled Graves is a first novel of considerable depth and insight.” DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Every Knee Shall Bow (1995
re-released in 2002 as Ruby Ridge)
THE TRUE STORY OF THE STANDOFF AT RUBY RIDGE
Finalist for the 1996 PEN Center West Literary Nonfiction Award, Every Knee Shall Bow is the story of the 1992 standoff in North Idaho between federal agents and white separatist Randy Weaver and his family. Made into a 1996 CBS miniseries starring Laura Dern, Randy Quaid and Kirstin Dunst.
"A stunning job of reporting." NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"The most comprehensive, best-written and even-handed account of Ruby Ridge." WASHINGTON TIMES
"Flowing, gripping, logically organized and rich in detail ... a story so tragid it's redolent of Shakespeare." USA TODAY
