Abundance
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction
A wrenching debut about the causes and effects of poverty, as seen by a father and son living in a pickup
Evicted from their trailer on New Year’s Eve, Henry and his son, Junior, have been reduced to living out of a pickup truck. Six months later, things are even more desperate. Henry, barely a year out of prison for pushing opioids, is down to his last pocketful of dollars, and little remains between him and the street. But hope is on the horizon: Today is Junior’s birthday, and Henry has a job interview tomorrow.
To celebrate, Henry treats Junior to dinner at McDonald’s, followed by a night in a real bed at a discount motel. For a moment, as Junior watches TV and Henry practices for his interview in the bathtub, all seems well. But after Henry has a disastrous altercation in the parking lot and Junior succumbs to a fever, father and son are sent into the night, struggling to hold things together and make it through tomorrow.
In an ingenious structural approach, Jakob Guanzon organizes Abundance by the amount of cash in Henry’s pocket. A new chapter starts with each debit and credit, and the novel expands and contracts, revealing the extent to which the quality of our attention is altered by the abundance—or lack thereof—that surrounds us. Set in an America of big-box stores and fast food, this incandescent debut novel trawls the fluorescent aisles of Walmart and the booths of Red Lobster to reveal the inequities and anxieties around work, debt, addiction, incarceration, and health care in America today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Guanzon debuts with a harrowing story of a man's desperation and unyielding love for his son. Single father Henry has less than $100 to his name, and he's planning on spending it on his son Junior's eighth birthday present: a night in a hotel with a real bed and cable TV instead of sleeping in Henry's truck. Recently released from a five-year prison sentence for possession of homemade fentanyl pills, Henry washes himself in the bathroom of a McDonald's and lives on junk food, while Junior's mother, Michelle, is nowhere to be found. Each chapter is titled after the dwindling amount of cash Henry has, while flashbacks show Henry's brief windfall from a pill sale and struggle to foot the hospital bill for Junior's delivery. Junior and Henry are all the other has, and Henry holds out hope that a job interview he has lined up at a call center will give them a shot at escaping their life of itinerancy. Unfortunately, Junior grows increasingly ill from their meager diet, and a violent altercation in a parking lot threatens to derail Henry's plans. Guanzon's descriptions of grinding poverty are visceral (pocket change rattles in Henry's pocket "like tiny shackles"), and Henry's attempts to fend off relentless adversity for the sake of his son are heartbreaking. This one hits hard.
