Small Claims

The brooding narrator of Kaufman’s (Born Weird) middling novel is nearly 50 and taking stock of his life. Introspective to a fault and drawn to merciless self-assessment, Charlie does not like what he finds. His job is meaningless; marriage has become strife. He’s a petty man filled with simmering rage, and feels he has “lost faith in this world” and become a cranky, bitter curmudgeon stagnating in a “state of empathy fatigue.” He believes he has squandered real talents on his job writing industrial manuals, achieved bare mediocrity, and settled into a glum disposition of cynical pessimism. His fourth novel, meant to revive a once-promising career, is (as Kaufman shows over four unnecessary chapters) a “literary disasterpiece.” Hoping to restore a withered “empathetic nature,” the narrator uses family vacation time for himself alone. On an errand to an ugly municipal building in the outer reaches of Toronto, he stumbles upon uglier proceedings in small claims court and returns to reflect on other cases. All the while he remains deep in thought. Despite the novelty of the narrator’s compulsive pit stops at court, Kaufman cannot fully overcome the sheer familiarity of his subject matter: a white professional guy facing a middle-age crisis stemming from a life of compromises, failed dreams, and potential never achieved. (May)