B R O K E

by Rupert Dreyfus

After years of austerity, life for many people in the UK has been reduced to a treadmill of zero-hour contracts, mounting debts and a crippling anxiety as to where the money is going to come from to pay the next bill. Meanwhile the filthy rich keep adding more and more zeros to their bank balances. Oscar Knight knows this better than anyone. Juggling two unreliable jobs, he finds himself resorting to ever more desperate measures to keep a roof above his head. As the cracks continue to grow, he finally visits one of London’s most ruthless loan sharks. When this quick fix plan backfires, he realises that only a miracle can save him. And then the opportunity of a lifetime presents itself in the unlikeliest of ways. Can Oscar do the impossible and find a way of scamming the filthy rich for once? Because if he doesn’t, his own treadmill is ready to buckle… Broke is not only a scathing satire about life among the dirt poor and an assault on widening inequality in modern Britain; it’s also a brutally fun crime caper which provides hope in a world that’s truly broke.

Genres: Fiction

294 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 11, 2018

About the author

Rupert Dreyfus is an award winning, Amazon top 10 selling author who writes black comedies as a means of venting about the state of the world. The influential magazine of cultural criticism PopMatters said that he writes “with the darkly absurd humour of a thirsty and somewhat paranoid Jonathan Swift”. Closer to home, activist and one-time musician Edwin Stratton described his work as “black bloc meets Black Mirror”.

Spark is his first novel which serves as a snapshot of modern-day Britain, seen through the eyes of disaffected computer hacker Jake Miller. After creating a legion of online followers known as Generation Y-bother, Jake shows us how incredibly easy it is to spark a revolution. You just have to be angry enough.

Dreyfus is also the author of The Rebel's Sketchbook; a collection of thirteen short stories. Targets include maniac world leaders, talentless boybands, Westminster politicians, social media idiots and much more. The Morning Star named it one of their favourite books of 2015.

More recently, Dreyfus has released a number of short stories as well as his first novella Prezident Scumbag!; a swipe at the rise of Donald Trump as told by crust punk squatter Faz.

It was nominated for Readfree.ly's 50 Best Indie Books of 2017 and subsequently placed 25th.

For more information about Rupert you can visit his website www.rupertdreyfus.co.uk.

"Dreyfus writes with the darkly absurd humour of a thirsty and somewhat paranoid Jonathan Swift." - Pop Matters

"Black block meets Black Mirror." - Edwin Stratton, activist and musician

"If his work doesn't make you think, I suggest getting your doctor to prescribe a course of fluoride tablets, subscribe to the Daily Mirror and vote in this year's X Factor." - The Canary

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I read or even re-read something by Rupert Dreyfus I always end up asking why is this guy not read by everybody and why hasn't he won any of the big awards? When a book like A Brief History in Seven Killings can win the Man Booker, dull, bloating and some dire writing, it makes you wonder what's going on when one paragraph in Broke blows the prize winners away:

"How the hell did we let things get so bad? Why do we keep electing these ruthless bastards, year after year? When did it become perfectly acceptable that the people they’re supposedly representing have to fight for crumbs in a world with so much cake that those who hoard the largest slice can’t even eat it all?"

The incredibly powerful writing by Dreyfus can make the reader feel so much, anger, outrage and fear. He can then share with you one small character and give you so much hope. The next instance he can create a scene so ridiculous you end up doing one of those real life LMAOs.

Broke is a fantastic book, brilliant cast of characters, Oscar our hero, a hippy and an ex-chef with some serious anger issues pull off the scam to end all scams. The blend of humour, violence, bad language and crazy plot make this an obvious choice to be made into a film, along the lines of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

As with all his books there are plenty of links to Dreyfus's other books, this story seems to be happening alongside the events in Spark. I love how much effort Dreyfus puts in to add that little bit of fun for the reader.

I 100% recommend this book as I think I've already found my top read for 2019.

Blog review> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...

[Rupert Dreyfus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be available soon. Another rally against the powers that be.

Add it now and I'll send you a copy when it's out.

[Rebecca Gransden · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Broke Dreyfus addresses the hardships of the daily grind. For many, working harder doesn’t bring reward as a consequence but instead ends in exhaustion and deeper financial uncertainty. This book is for those under the delusion that meritocratic ascendency for all is possible under the current governmental system.

Set in contemporary Britain the novel tackles the toll taken by being broke, the stress of living day to day on meagre means. It is about the tiredness experienced as a result of not having enough money to feed yourself, and about the strain and worry when the threat of eviction is ever present. The Haves and Have Nots have always coexisted, of course, and the resultant disparities have rung out over centuries. No one is pretending the put-upon have a new or novel complaint. Here Dreyfus provides a frontline account of desperate lives, and attempts to give a voice to those whose stories are untold. There is no whinging here, apart from understandable venting on occasion, but we are all human, are we not? Dreyfus establishes a set of characters at the bottom of the socioeconomic strata and presents their tribulations in a forthright and uncompromising manner. Parts of this book are deathly funny, I warn you.

So, if Britain is broke - both in finances and in the general sense - what is the sensible response? For those forced into a very scummy-looking corner and left with the last vestiges of an instinct for survival, the answer sometimes comes from dodgy places. Into this world is thrown Oscar, battling to keep his head above water, struggling with insecure jobs low on employee rights, and facing being thrown out of his less than palatial living quarters. Through a fog of anxiety and increasing physical frailty, he searches for a way to remedy the situation, or at least hang on to what little he has. A series of acquaintances turn up and they somehow stumble into an outlandish scheme that no one in their right mind would entertain as wise in any circumstance. But circumstances conspire, and a bleak comedy of errors ensues. As with all Dreyfus’ writing, there is a strong streak of boisterous humour, but here it is never far from a blackness close to resignation. Whatever capers the brisk and punchy dialogue underlines, beneath a sense of lostness and abandonment suggests itself, the absurdity of the situation displaying an uncomfortable melancholy and frustration.

Broke is a record of modern underclass woes. Among the satirical riffing Dreyfus is known for and does well there is a swell of rage and despondency that marks this out as having a tone unique in his catalogue. Sharp and entertaining.

[Mike Robbins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meet Oscar. He’s doing the night shift at the posh Hotel Normandy, where he serves drinks to the moneyed, spoiled and abusive. That’s when he can get a shift. In the daytime he tries to make some extra cash as a door-to-door salesman for dodgy insurance products. Meanwhile he tries to work out how to pay his rent; he’s just about to get evicted from the crummy little flatlet he rents in a crumbling tower block somewhere in the London suburbs.

He dreams about kidnapping his landlord, Monty, a grasping faux-Edwardian dandy who sports a cricket jumper and a cravat. But Monty goes away on business, leaving his office empty – and then a brace of brutal Russians appear at the Hotel Normandy. Suddenly Oscar sees a way of putting these two facts together, to his advantage. Does his scam succeed? Read the book.

Rupert Dreyfus’s Broke is satire of the sort that Britain needs. For decades, modern British fiction was dominated by a tweedy publishing business that saw the world in its own mirror. Dreyfus is different; his books are set in an increasingly bleak and divided country in which the rich get richer while many struggle with the gig economy. He was also the driving force behind The Anti-Austerity Anthology, a collection of pieces by 17 mostly left-leaning indie writers that was published in 2018.

None of that means Broke (or Dreyfus’s other stuff) is preachy; this guy does satire, and bits of Broke are very funny. Which bits, will depend on you. (I liked something involving one of the Russians and the Speaker’s Chair.) Broke also has strong characters; Monty, the Russians, a horrible film director, a gentle social worker, a manic ex-sous-chef, a spaced-out hippie and a vicious loan shark. They are written a bit larger than life, as is Dreyfus’s way. It isn’t subtle. But it’s funny. And, no spoilers (hate those in reviews), but I liked the end of this book a lot.

There’ll be more to come from Dreyfus. Meanwhile, besides Broke, I recommend his first novel, Spark. He’s also a skilled short-story writer; several of his pieces can be read free online (they’re linked from his Goodreads page) and there’s also a lively collection, The Rebel's Sketchbook, published in 2015.

Anyone in desperate need of a good left-leaning laugh (and that’s a lot of us right now) should get to know Dreyfus’s books, quick.

[Harry Whitewolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rupert Dreyfus is the best writer to emerge on the literary scene since Irvine Welsh. What’s more, his books just keep getting better and better. I can’t praise his work enough. He can weave a great yarn, but the stories of Dreyfus’ books are more vehicles that serve to highlight the injustices of the modern world and the underbelly of shafted society. Above all though, Dreyfus’ books are simply funny as fuck. As a writer and a reader, I marvel at the way Dreyfus has honed his craft to the extent where every single paragraph, every single line, is the funniest thing I’ve ever read. As if that weren’t enough, he also manages to make the reader stop in his or her tracks by suddenly including moments of such realness, tenderness and tragedy that you can’t help but get angry at the system that’s caused such shit or shed a tear for a character who epitomises a real-life person living in dire straits. Balancing such tragedy and comedy is no easy feat. Dreyfus’ writing is so good, he almost makes me want to chuck in the towel as a writer.

In this book (Dreyfus’ second full-length novel), the protagonist Oscar Knight is not OK. He’s brOKe. This ain’t no jOKe. He’s working two jobs and still barely managing to pay the bills, let alone have enough left over for a cup of tea or a decent meal. (I once worked three jobs simultaneously and was still as skint as Oscar.) One of Oscar’s jobs is commission-based and the other is a zero hours contract. This means you can end up working full time and still be behind on your rent and threatened with eviction, while performing as a slave-wage to multi-millionaire arseholes. To avoid becoming yet another homeless person in broken Britain, Oscar comes up with a plan. I say he comes up with a plan – he actually blags his way through a scam (in true British style) with his equally broke colleagues; the frequently-masturbating Bret, and Dylan - a hippy from the desert who refuses to wear shoes. Mix a Russian oligarch and a gangster loan shark into the mix, and suddenly Oscar and his pals have an opportunity of redistributing the wealth to get themselves out of their widening hole of poverty.

This book is much more than a comic crime caper. It sums up the reality of modern austerity-driven Britain, where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. So don’t be a mushy pea. Read Broke. Then read every other book by Dreyfus. Then start a revolution.

I mean it when I say this is one of my favourite-ever books.

[Michael Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rupert's work keeps getting better. I loved this one.

[martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not always my kind of humour, but I could definitely see this as the basis for a successful Simon Pegg - Nick Frost film script. I’ll certainly never be able to see the Speaker of the Commons presiding from his chair in future without chuckling!

Rupert Dreyfus can write well, the description of a looming panic attack early on in the book left me thinking, “that’s exactly it, that’s what happens!” I’d love to see him try a slightly less full on in your face novel.

[Dorian Box · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another transgressive fiction book by Rupert Dreyfus. I don't have much to add in terms of description that hasn't already been said better in the other reviews, but I'll add that, although Dreyfus lives in and writes from a UK perspective, as an American it was impossible reading this book not to draw parallels between his characters' frustrations and disgust with the widening divide between the haves and the have nots what is happening the US. If you haven't read Rupert Dreyfus before, start with Spark. Broke follows in that same deep vein of discontent and rebellion.