(This review was reprinted from Goodreads with a few modifications.)
In a future, dystopian America, ultaconservative politics has won the day. Environmental regulations have been stripped away, labor protections reduced to nothing, the hospitals and schools privatized. Deregulation and privatization have removed all forms of social support and the inequality between the haves and have-nots has become an unbreachable chasm. Credit scoring is now an all-powerful weapon. Waves of people with low credit scores – titular Subprimes – live in squats called “Ryanvilles”, migrating by night to avoid arrest and the debtor’s prison. The leaders of this strange new America are a televangelist preacher and the Pepper sisters, two stand-ins for the Koch brothers.
And from this drought-plagued, fraudulent, fracked-up darkness there emerges a glimmer of humanity in the form of a laid-back journalist (the voice of the author?) who seeks a normal life for his kids, and a mysterious wonderwoman biker without a credit score named Sargam. Will Sargam’s belief in “People Helping People” be enough to save this decaying America?
I don’t even care. After finishing this, I still don’t even know why I picked this book up.
Kudos to the author for creating such an outlandish and frightening future America. But that’s just about the only thing I enjoyed in The Subprimes. I’d say this is a scathing indictment of modern conservatism, but it’s way over the top even for a satire. By making conservatives so extreme, they become strawmen and cease to be believable characters. (I say this as a person without a partisan affiliation.) Perhaps Greenfeld was aiming for a “way-over-the-top” satire style, but failed in execution. The writing hovers somewhat uncomfortably between literary humor and serious social comment, with a dash of even the supernatural. When Subprimes’ satire is evident, it’s almost as preachy as the religious zealots it’s trying to mock.
Story-wise, this book doesn’t do it for me either. None of the characters are relatable or even interesting. The journalist and his son become annoying after a while; the preacher is unlikable; the Subprimes are flat. Even Sargam, the mysterious everywoman, feels mundane. The plot is slow to build, and when it does, it reaches an unsatisfying resolution.
I hate to write a negative review for such an inventive concept, but I simply did not enjoy the overall book. Between over-the-top preachiness and weak storytelling, The Subprimes is just…subprime.
The Subprimes by Karl Taro Greenfeld. Pub. 2015 by Harper. Hardcover, 320 pages. ISBN13: 9780062132420.
I love the cover, though.
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