In W.C. Latour’s THE BARGAIN SHOPPER, money is the center of erudite technophobe Charles Rochambeau’s life. Because he received no inheritance from his super wealthy family, Charles works diligently to make money and uses his earnings wisely. He spends ample time with well-educated, pretentious snobs, but he dedicates his off-hours to coupon clipping, seeking drastic price cuts on clothing simply for the joy of beating the system, and giving away what he finds as gifts. The story moves between his present, where he’s helping a wealthy woman plan an elaborate wedding, and his chaotic youth, where he went from rags to riches and back to rags again. As a teen and into his young adulthood, he worked for a local mafia family until he saved enough to sneak his way into the University of Pennsylvania, where he partied in fraternity houses with nymphomaniacs—a time of carnal anarchy. When the past catches up to the present, the COVID-19 pandemic shuts everything down—leaving Charles drowning in cynicism as malls close across the country. He can no longer perform his beloved discount shopping hobby, and his wedding-planning gig goes sideways.

As the book’s first-person narrator, Charles is an intellectual, misanthropic muser who constantly proclaims that he can’t help but tell the truth in this, his book of “confessions.” He uses literary references as scatological or gallows humor; for instance, he is living in an “American Bildungsroman…with an emphasis on the dung part.” When each new character is introduced, they receive Charles’s signature thorough explanatory treatment—which lists their achievements, failures, and quirks with a compelling and snarky attitude. Many details have no bearing on the plot and build up characters who only appear in a chapter or two, but the descriptions are entertaining nonetheless. In the span of a few short paragraphs, the individuals in Charles’s story come to vivid, absurdist life. He, for instance, drives a “peasant-gray Corolla” that evidences his sense of thrift, his grandfather toasts Charlemagne with fine French wine every Christmas, and the wealthy divorcée boss he adores suffers from a shopaholic-ism with “no cure except impoverishment.” While this cynical narrator is fluent in exacting characterization, there are occasional inconsistencies with tense and punctuation (comma issues, for instance).

THE BARGAIN SHOPPER jumps between the past and the present from chapter to chapter such that the main plot often gets lost in the narrative’s grand descriptions. Meanwhile, passages describing historical events or Charles’s wide-ranging opinions require a patience that sometimes gets rewarded with laughter but other times with a cringe. Politicians from both sides of the aisle incur Charles’s wrath, as do pundits, cultural icons, and religious figureheads. His views are a bit anarchic in nature; he hates everybody equally. In one part of the book, the narrator blames Fauci, Cuomo, and Trump for the pandemic situation in New York.

Political discourse, diatribes about reactions to COVID-19, and general commentary on modern society offer eloquent wisdom and convoluted rants in turn. “My 600 lb. Life or Dr. Pimple Popper and an explosion of shows about Little People,” he says in a moment of insight, “are carnival sideshows that prove the circus in America never really disappeared. It is alive and well and recast to showcase the dregs of our cultural abyss on cable television.” Additionally, he asserts, “Privileged students buy into the myth of a world besotted with affluenza, parental neglect and adult duplicity.” This novel doesn’t shy away from contentious issues, including scatological and sexual content, which may limit the book’s audience to those with a similar worldview as its main character. However, it’s the narrator’s strong opinions that make THE BARGAIN SHOPPER come to life—and some readers might enjoy having their opinions tested.

An endlessly entertaining life story of its intellectual, misanthropic main character, W.C. Latour’s THE BARGAIN SHOPPER is a literary novel whose political and social commentary is not for the faint of heart.

~Aimee Jodoin for IndieReader