Charlie is a sad-sack novelist making ends meet as a technical writer. His wife, Julie, is providing the principal income to support them and their two young children, Jenny and Jack. His current novel is such a disaster that there may not be anything in it worth saving. And he finds himself wavering between unwarranted anger and unquenchable anxiety. He’s walking down the road to mediocrity and can’t find the exit. That is until he stumbles into a session of small claims court and witnesses a real life dispute with an overarching adjudicator and a clear outcome. Charlie is hooked. His now-chosen manner of avoiding both his dissatisfying novel and his technical writing obligations is to slip off to small claims court each day and see what else is on the docket. But it’s probably not an effective way to deal with his own self-loathing.

Andrew Kaufman’s typically breezy style works well in some sections of this brief novel. The descriptions of the court cases and, later, of civil weddings are charming. But are they more than that? They seem to function well independently but not cohere into a larger whole. And since Charlie’s woes are almost entirely self-inflicted, it’s hard to sympathize with him. He’s apparently published — not self-published — four novels already. So clearly someone believes in his ability as a novelist even if he is riddled by self-doubt. Perhaps his mistake was thinking that publishing small, quirky novels in Canada was ever likely to lead to financial independence. But then that would merely be another example of Charlie being wholly unrealistic. And disappointment suffered due to wholly unrealistic expectations is not really that substantial, however much it might feel that way to Charlie.

Much like the novel that Charlie disavows, this one feels as though there is a germ of a good idea, maybe more, that just needed a bit more nurturing to turn into something more. Well, now I sympathize. ( )

The narrator of SMALL CLAIMS, by Andrew Kaufman, is struggling with his place in the world. He is a struggling writer, having to settle on writing technical manuals to make a living. His marriage has stagnated, to the point that it's easier to have apathy about his wife than try to fix the marital problems. He is even fumbling through fatherhood. Small claims court has become his salvation; he observes the people and situations of each case, and considers his feelings on each matter. Eventually, he starts to see a connection between many of the cases and his own life and perhaps opens his eyes to consider changes in himself.
I'll start by saying that a strong impression is made by the book cover; it looks like someone spilled coffee on it and then tried to wipe it off the best the could, much like the life of the narrator of the book, he always tries to clean up his mess, but sometimes remnants of the mess can't be wiped away. Kaufman uses the court cases to inform us about the narrator by seeing each case through his (the narrator's) eyes. I wanted a little more about the narrator's wife Julie because I didn't really care about her and therefore I was siding with the narrator the whole time, even when I kind of didn't want to. Being someone who is in his early 40's, I did understand and sympathize with many of his problems and struggles and not knowing how to fix them.
I enjoyed SMALL CLAIMS, although I feel like the reading audience to this book is a bit limited. I think a young person who hasn't lived much life yet might not get much of challenges of marriage, kids, and purpose in life won't appreciate this layers of SMALL CLAIMS as much as someone with more experience with life's trails.
I received a copy of the book as part of the Goodreads Giveaway program. ( )