Jess Walter writes how I think; dialogue fast and racing, thoughts building upon one another like a giant game of Jenga, piling up dangerously and ending never anywhere near where they started.

Despite the relatively melancholy subject matter of his book The Financial Lives of the Poets (towering debt, unemployment, a wayward wife and a failed web site) there are dozens of laugh out loud moments, moments when you think Matthew Prior can't possibly make any more self sabotaging decisions. Yet he does, and it is with the eye of an amateur but the balls of a virtuoso that he concocts a plan to solve everything.

It’s the bit players in Matthew’s saga that really shine; his dementia addled father, reminiscing about chipped beef, his 2 young sons, never without honest questions, Chuck, a lumber expert and his wife’s former flame. Every character distinct and individual and just as fascinating as Matthew.

Then there is the poetry; the basis of which lies in the fact that Matthew quit his job to start up a web site that offered financial advice in the form of poetry. There is plenty of keen poetry to be had but I found myself skimming over it, so intent on getting back to the calamity at hand, heaven forbid I miss one bit of it.

The Financial Lives of the Poets is an entirely gratifying read. Absorbing & affecting, it might just well leave your face aching from smiling.