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Small Claims
Shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award
In this new novel by ReLit award–winning, Leacock-nominated writer Andrew Kaufman, the narrator eschews the usual avenues of mid-life crisis-sportscars, mistresses-and instead seeks meaning in the least likely of small claims court. There, he struggles to understand what’s gone wrong in his marriage, his career as a writer, and his relationship with his two young children.
With small observations, subtle investigations, and the pursuit of small-scale justice, he attempts to rebuild his faith in humanity through the framework of a court system that won’t let you sue for damages above twenty thousand dollars. Small Claims is a big dose of tenderness for the frailties of the heart.
"[Kaufman's] prose is so refreshingly heartfelt and natural that he makes it easy to believe.”—The Coast
In this new novel by ReLit award–winning, Leacock-nominated writer Andrew Kaufman, the narrator eschews the usual avenues of mid-life crisis-sportscars, mistresses-and instead seeks meaning in the least likely of small claims court. There, he struggles to understand what’s gone wrong in his marriage, his career as a writer, and his relationship with his two young children.
With small observations, subtle investigations, and the pursuit of small-scale justice, he attempts to rebuild his faith in humanity through the framework of a court system that won’t let you sue for damages above twenty thousand dollars. Small Claims is a big dose of tenderness for the frailties of the heart.
"[Kaufman's] prose is so refreshingly heartfelt and natural that he makes it easy to believe.”—The Coast
178 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2017
1 person is currently reading
381 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Kaufman
24 books478 followersANDREW KAUFMAN's critically acclaimed first book, All My Friends Are Superheroes, was a cult hit and has been translated into six languages. Kaufman is also an accomplished screenwriter, film-maker and radio producer and has completed a Director's Residency at the Canadian Film Centre. He lives in Toronto with his wife and their two children.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 8, 2017
This was a book of many little truths about life and failure and dealing with the small things to hold on to the big picture.
June 18, 2017
Where does one go, within oneself or without, to find the way to carry on? The novel "Small Claims" offers witty, insightful, absurd and gently sardonic places as answers to these questions, to the delight of the reader.
Andrew Kaufman's story is both wryly comic and a more than a bit heart-breaking. The novel's themes of self-acceptance amid unfulfilled (and perhaps unfulfillable) expectations and personal (dis)illusions are presented inventively. Mr. Kaufman's narrator held my interest throughout the book. The book is well-written and glides along winningly.
The book's conceit--using literal-seeming descriptions to chronicle the narrator's more abstract struggle to make sense of things--works very well. Despite the fantastic elements of the plot, it's not surprising that Mr. Kaufman must caution at novel's end that this was indeed a "work of fiction". All the pleasing absurdities in the plot feel a bit real and like a roman a clef. That, plus one of the most fun failed-novel-within-a-novel subplots I have ever read, keeps this novel an entertaining read from cover to cover. Perhaps a bit more energy could have been spent on fleshing out the characters of the narrator's family. but in mitigation that narrative choice paradoxically gives the reader more insight into the narrator's point of view.
I also appreciated that the publisher sold this book in a DRM-free e-book format, though Goodreads does not recognize this edition. The publisher's website made getting the right edition to use with my computer's e-reading software smooth.
I heartily recommend "Small Claims" for anyone hunting for a quick read that is literate and literary in all the right ways, and in few if any of the ponderous ones.
Andrew Kaufman's story is both wryly comic and a more than a bit heart-breaking. The novel's themes of self-acceptance amid unfulfilled (and perhaps unfulfillable) expectations and personal (dis)illusions are presented inventively. Mr. Kaufman's narrator held my interest throughout the book. The book is well-written and glides along winningly.
The book's conceit--using literal-seeming descriptions to chronicle the narrator's more abstract struggle to make sense of things--works very well. Despite the fantastic elements of the plot, it's not surprising that Mr. Kaufman must caution at novel's end that this was indeed a "work of fiction". All the pleasing absurdities in the plot feel a bit real and like a roman a clef. That, plus one of the most fun failed-novel-within-a-novel subplots I have ever read, keeps this novel an entertaining read from cover to cover. Perhaps a bit more energy could have been spent on fleshing out the characters of the narrator's family. but in mitigation that narrative choice paradoxically gives the reader more insight into the narrator's point of view.
I also appreciated that the publisher sold this book in a DRM-free e-book format, though Goodreads does not recognize this edition. The publisher's website made getting the right edition to use with my computer's e-reading software smooth.
I heartily recommend "Small Claims" for anyone hunting for a quick read that is literate and literary in all the right ways, and in few if any of the ponderous ones.
October 18, 2022
I’m so glad this contains what the book jacket claims: “a big dose of tenderness for the frailties of the heart.”
It is perhaps why words were invented: to give us the power to use facts in the service of our own perspective, then to try to convince someone else—a justice, a reader, a lover—to share that point of view. To see it the way we want them to. The vast majority of a human life is spent trying to construct a convincing story. And while it can be argued that this, on occasion, involves telling the truth, it’s certainly different from giving the whole story.
February 25, 2018
Loved this! And it came at the perfect time for me in my life.
August 15, 2021
Marriage breakdown seen through the eyes of a Toronto writer who spends his days at a small claims court. The cases are as twisted as the turns the marriage takes. Emotive and original.
October 25, 2017
Although quarterlife crises have been an option since 2001 and I’m sure are still be fashionable I’m not sure anyone under the age of forty-ish would be the ideal reader for this text and, best I would think, a male although never having been an anything-ish female I can’t say for sure. Few things are certain—the older I get the ishier life becomes—and that is just one of the many things of which I’m certain I’m uncertain about. What I am certain I’m certain about is (having experienced, nay, wallowed in, my own midlife crisis some twenty years back and, possibly a two-thirds-life crisis about ten years back) this book was preaching to the choir.
What follows is a horrible analogy and I apologise in advance but I really can’t think of a better one. Reading this book feels like listening to the guy in the next stall to you in a public toilet take a long and noisy (but not especially satisfying) shit. We’ve all been there but we don’t like to think about it, the fact that we shit, that everyone shits and even though the word ‘shit’ has crept into our day to day vocabulary somehow it’s managed to disassociate itself from its scatological origins. So, when I say that this book’s narrator feels like shit we all know what I mean and that’s there’s no poo involved.
The word ‘shit’ or some variation thereof appears only seven times in the book and mostly when it does the narrator is describing his unpublished (and, likely, unpublishable) novel whose title at least is not shit: Forgive Us Our Eccentricities as We Forgive the Eccentricities of Others. He describes it as “a surrealistic coming-of-age story, a narrative format and arc that work together in much the same way that bicycle tires and glass do.” He, oddly enough, does not use ‘shit’ to describe his day job—needless to say he is not a fulltime or even semi-successful novelist (he writes technical manuals for a living)—or his marriage or his relationship with his two children although it’s fair to say he’s been a shitty husband for some time and is in danger of becoming a shitty father and by that I mean a weekend dad.
Our narrator’s life is at a crossroads and so what does he do? This:
The book’s chapters all follow the same format. He describes either the court case or the wedding and intersperses his accounts with pithy observations on life in general and details of his life in specific. What possesses him to go there is a mystery because it’s not as if the building is close by. As he puts it:
Now don’t get me wrong. Our narrator is neither a religious nor a spiritual man; nothing mystical is driving him. He is, however, a writer, successful or not, and if there’s one thing all writers have to acknowledge eventually it’s that we’re never as in control of our writing—and, by logical extension, our lives—as we would like to be. No one chooses to go through any kind of existential crisis. They happen and we cope and, occasionally, we come out of the other end a little wiser.
I’m not sure at what point our narrator realises he’s in the middle of a midlife crisis but eventually the reality dawns on him and this is how he describes his condition:
Is this book without flaws? Probably not but none jumped out at me. I had to look elsewhere to see what other reviewers made of it. For instance the Publishers Weekly review ends as follows: “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.” I don’t, however, see this as a negative. What it does is guarantee him an audience to a book that will never go out of fashion because every generation picks up Catcher in the Rye and thinks it’s about them and, likewise, every generation will hit their mid-forties and realise the end is closer than the beginning. This book doesn’t provide hope but maybe it says hopelessness isn’t all that bad.
Like most people I would imagine I discovered Kaufman through All My Friends are Superheroes and steadily worked my way through everything I could lay my hands of afterwards. If I saw a new book by him I’d buy it without even reading the blurb and I’d probably start reading it without reading the blurb or looking for reviews. He’s one of those authors like Richard Brautigan in that way and I hope he ends up writing as many books. Had I read this book in isolation I’d likely have given it five stars and raved about it but having seen what he’s done before I have to admit he can do better. So the four stars is in relation to his personal oeuvre and not the rest of the literary world.
What follows is a horrible analogy and I apologise in advance but I really can’t think of a better one. Reading this book feels like listening to the guy in the next stall to you in a public toilet take a long and noisy (but not especially satisfying) shit. We’ve all been there but we don’t like to think about it, the fact that we shit, that everyone shits and even though the word ‘shit’ has crept into our day to day vocabulary somehow it’s managed to disassociate itself from its scatological origins. So, when I say that this book’s narrator feels like shit we all know what I mean and that’s there’s no poo involved.
The word ‘shit’ or some variation thereof appears only seven times in the book and mostly when it does the narrator is describing his unpublished (and, likely, unpublishable) novel whose title at least is not shit: Forgive Us Our Eccentricities as We Forgive the Eccentricities of Others. He describes it as “a surrealistic coming-of-age story, a narrative format and arc that work together in much the same way that bicycle tires and glass do.” He, oddly enough, does not use ‘shit’ to describe his day job—needless to say he is not a fulltime or even semi-successful novelist (he writes technical manuals for a living)—or his marriage or his relationship with his two children although it’s fair to say he’s been a shitty husband for some time and is in danger of becoming a shitty father and by that I mean a weekend dad.
Our narrator’s life is at a crossroads and so what does he do? This:
This morning I called the Howlstein Corporation, asked for an extension on writing the manual for the Gleam 4-19 Automatic Dishwasher, and then invoked the thirteen days of vacation I have banked. I lied to my wife and children as well. As far as my family is concerned, I’ve rented a temporary office space because I’m overwhelmed by deadlines and am unable to concentrate at my desk in the den, that I need the focus and privacy only an office can provide. My family knows that my occupation is stressful, filled with tight turnarounds and unrealistic expectations, the sort of job where success goes unnoticed and only failure brings attention. That’s where they think I am, hard at work, toiling for the good of our nuclear family.In reality he spends his days in either the small claims court or muscling his way into weddings pretending he’s “writing an article on city hall weddings for the Globe and Mail” which he gets away with because mostly everyone’s too caught up in the proceedings to pay him any heed.
The book’s chapters all follow the same format. He describes either the court case or the wedding and intersperses his accounts with pithy observations on life in general and details of his life in specific. What possesses him to go there is a mystery because it’s not as if the building is close by. As he puts it:
Five minutes later [after walking my kids to school], I found myself standing in front of the Christie subway entrance. I already felt like a passenger. I paid the fare, took the Bloor train east, and transferred to the Yonge line, which I rode north to the North York stop. A flight of stairs, a push through the turnstile, a short walk, and I found myself standing in front 47 Sheppard Avenue East.This makes as much sense to me as pregnant women craving pulled pork on vanilla ice cream or kosher dill pickles stuffed with grape jelly and that’s not no sense; our bodies are quite good at identifying needs and sending us signals. Something deep inside him realises this is what he needs and so that’s where he ends up. Mostly he opts for the small claims court but, as he puts it, “[w]hen I find myself sharing the elevator with a wedding party, I take it as a sign…”
Now don’t get me wrong. Our narrator is neither a religious nor a spiritual man; nothing mystical is driving him. He is, however, a writer, successful or not, and if there’s one thing all writers have to acknowledge eventually it’s that we’re never as in control of our writing—and, by logical extension, our lives—as we would like to be. No one chooses to go through any kind of existential crisis. They happen and we cope and, occasionally, we come out of the other end a little wiser.
I’m not sure at what point our narrator realises he’s in the middle of a midlife crisis but eventually the reality dawns on him and this is how he describes his condition:
A mid-life crisis isn’t provoked by an inability to move upward, or the realization that long-held goals are no longer attainable, but from questioning whether fighting to achieve them is worth it.This position is mulled upon at length and not unentertainly. As Beckett rightly observed: “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” But there has to be a point to unhappiness. It has to lead somewhere. Otherwise, well, it’s just sad. We might not get to see the light at the end of the tunnel but we should at least get to see the mouth of the tunnel. That’s a fair place to leave your character. And that’s what Kaufman does. Only he doesn’t talk about tunnels; his metaphor of choice is the high wire:
I guess the knowledge that I’m walking on a tiny, thin wire, that there is a lethal drop between the bottom of my feet and the ground far below me, was inevitable. In my twenties, it was pure confidence, however unearned, that propelled me forward, and I never paused long enough to look down. I just keep going forward, living life as a series of uninterrupted steps, each one bringing me closer to whatever goal I was chasing in the moment. Then, somewhere in my late thirties, I had my first glimmering realization that failure, that a lack of arrival, is possible. But it was in my forties, after my forward progress had slowed, and the firmness of my conviction in the righteousness of that goal grew soft, that for the first time I looked down.So we’re saying life is all about the journey? I’m not sure that would be the moral I’d attach to the end of this book but mastering the high wire (even a figurative high wire) is not a skill to be sniffed at. That’s all I’m saying.
Is this book without flaws? Probably not but none jumped out at me. I had to look elsewhere to see what other reviewers made of it. For instance the Publishers Weekly review ends as follows: “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.” I don’t, however, see this as a negative. What it does is guarantee him an audience to a book that will never go out of fashion because every generation picks up Catcher in the Rye and thinks it’s about them and, likewise, every generation will hit their mid-forties and realise the end is closer than the beginning. This book doesn’t provide hope but maybe it says hopelessness isn’t all that bad.
Like most people I would imagine I discovered Kaufman through All My Friends are Superheroes and steadily worked my way through everything I could lay my hands of afterwards. If I saw a new book by him I’d buy it without even reading the blurb and I’d probably start reading it without reading the blurb or looking for reviews. He’s one of those authors like Richard Brautigan in that way and I hope he ends up writing as many books. Had I read this book in isolation I’d likely have given it five stars and raved about it but having seen what he’s done before I have to admit he can do better. So the four stars is in relation to his personal oeuvre and not the rest of the literary world.
March 22, 2017
Great book to read in your 50s! "The act of looking down, this phase of my life forcing me to see the catastrophic consequences of my every misstep, knowing how easily everything can go wrong, the gravity-assisted pace with which failure arrives, has been overwhelming and undermining." . . . "The best you can do is enjoy what you have."
October 24, 2017
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.
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.
February 13, 2018
As a man’s marriage begins to fail he heads to the small claims court and wedding chapel at Toronto City Hall to understand the challenges and intricacies of other people’s relationships. Some of his observations are astute, beautifully imagined and even funny and help him develop his own understanding of where his life has gone off track. However I didn’t find this book a page turner and had to force myself to pick it up again after periods of infidelity with other works.
A noticeable departure from the surreal for author Andrew Kaufman I will be interested to see where his next novel takes him.
A noticeable departure from the surreal for author Andrew Kaufman I will be interested to see where his next novel takes him.
July 9, 2018
This is a slim book, but so densely populated by anxiety that I found it difficult to get through. This isn’t bad. This is very probably good. But for me, personally, anxiously, this book was difficult.
Unsurprisingly, by the end, Kaufman is eager to reiterate that it is a work of fiction, in case we start to get any ideas about how our anxious, selfish, underemployed, moorless freelance writer of a protagonist might relate to the author of the book. All the same, the question lingers in the background: how much of this is real? How much are we willing to deep-dive into anxiety with either the author or the character? How much writing about writing are we willing to endure?
Unsurprisingly, by the end, Kaufman is eager to reiterate that it is a work of fiction, in case we start to get any ideas about how our anxious, selfish, underemployed, moorless freelance writer of a protagonist might relate to the author of the book. All the same, the question lingers in the background: how much of this is real? How much are we willing to deep-dive into anxiety with either the author or the character? How much writing about writing are we willing to endure?
September 11, 2017
In the midst of a mid-life crises, the author starts to observe Small Claims Court in Toronto and weddings at the City Hall Chapel. The Court visits make for the most interesting parts of the book. Towards the end, his wife gets her say in the matter. The book is readable. Not too good, Not too Bad and Not too long.
January 12, 2018
I won this book from Goodreads.
It's the story of a man in mid-life crisis who begins to attend Small Claims court in Toronto as sort of a way to take his mind off his marital and parenting problems.
A very different take on how one could deal with lifes problems and an OK read but not an especially interesting one.
It's the story of a man in mid-life crisis who begins to attend Small Claims court in Toronto as sort of a way to take his mind off his marital and parenting problems.
A very different take on how one could deal with lifes problems and an OK read but not an especially interesting one.
December 22, 2019
This isn’t my favourite Andrew Kaufman. I really enjoyed the weddings/small claims cases, and his writing was compelling as always. It all felt a bit meta and I’m not surprised he had to disclaimer at the end that it’s fiction because I thought that it might not be at times.
June 21, 2017
Not one of my favourite Andrew Kaufman books. Didn't seem to flow properly, but his writing is still so special and original.
October 25, 2017
I won a copy of this book.
An author is having a mid-life crisis and attends small claims court and wedding ceremonies in Toronto. The story is short (171 pages total) and I read in one sitting.
An author is having a mid-life crisis and attends small claims court and wedding ceremonies in Toronto. The story is short (171 pages total) and I read in one sitting.
July 26, 2018
I really like Andrew Kaufman. When I started reading this book, I wasn't quite sure what it was, but in the end I very much enjoyed the storytelling.
October 29, 2020
Loved it.
March 30, 2017
short read, should just be a short story and cut even shorter. guy talks about his missteps in life before and after marriage and winds up in small claims court observing a trial of divorce. Terrible written and nothing happens. Got as a pre-sale to review and sorry I wasted my time. glad I didn't spend any money and wold tell poeple to avoid doing so.
May 14, 2017
This is a very short book. Our unnamed main character works through his midlife crisis by following various cases in small claims court. I felt this worked for me like a series of short stories. There are many interesting scenes but they don't come together very strongly.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews