I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an impartial review.

It is a falsehood to have Who Is Rich? posted on my READ shelf; it belongs on my Did Not Finish shelf. I tried really hard and read about 20% of this first person narrator novel. The problem was that I didn't enjoy any of it.

There is a danger with first person narrators - they can be oblivious to their frailties and are somewhat self-centered. In this novel, graphic novelist Rich Fischer is a returning teacher at a summer arts conference. Wife and children, along with the day-to-day realities of family, are left at home while Rich does the conference. Rich questions the future of his marriage while reminiscing about a flirtatious encounter with a past participant at the summer arts conference. His one semi hit graphic novel propelled him toward other opportunities but he has been unable to capitalize on these. Rich, personally and professionally, appears caught in a perpetual state of ennui.

Characters and plot line were not interesting enough to get me to continue on.

I didn't read the synopsis and thought it was a self-help type of book LOL!! When I realized it wasn't, I couldn't get into the story. My bad.

Summer Camp and Near-Fatal Attractions: On WHO IS RICH? by Matthew Klam

This novel drops the reader into the cauldron of a prestigious summer arts workshop, where the narrator, Rich Fischer, is teaching an "autobiographical cartooning" studio. Brimming with word play and precise, hilarious details, the plot roughly follows the protagonist's ill-advised plunge into an affair with an ultra-wealthy (Melania-type) art student named Amy. His indulgence is juxtaposed with flashbacks, musings, and wishful thinking about complex life with his successful wife, Robin, and their children who remain back home. "Then I felt bad because I really loved Robin and my two little zipadees. I could still make it right. If I had to break Amy's other arm, I'd get the bracelet back. My kids were the whole show. Without them I was lost. Without Robin my life was garbage."

Klam knots tension through each chapter, and I furiously turned pages wondering how the affair would resolve. The thing is, it never actually resolves. The narrator traps readers in the quicksand of his own self-destructive romp at summer camp, and there we remain. Holding a mis-placed pair of million-dollar diamond earrings and a heart full of "psychic grief".

My thing is usually literary women's fiction, so this dive into a a contemporary man's inner world was a stretch; the author successfully renders the interior world of a guy struggling to get a grip, a depressed artist on the verge of multiple emotional catastrophes.

Big themes here: fissures in contemporary marriage; limits of an affair; how suffering empowers art (and why); responsibility versus self-indulgence; summer arts workshops as a cauldron for all that is possible; misery-loves- company.

I especially love the scenes that take place in workshop, where Rich briefly engages with each student, encouraging them to further their cartooning craft to assuage their mistakes and misadventures through art, all the while doubting his own creative process.

I am returning this book unread. No time right now.

This book is on my “To Be Read” pile, it looks like a fun mid-life crisis kind of style and if it’s funny or quirky then I know I’m going to love it. Who Is Rich by Matthew Klam centers around a married, middle-aged cartoonist at a weeklong arts conference who falls for a married woman.

Here’s the synopsis:

Every summer, a once-sort-of-famous middle-aged cartoonist named Rich Fischer leaves his wife and two kids behind to teach a class at a weeklong arts conference in a charming New England beachside town. It’s a place where, every year, students—nature poets and driftwood sculptors, widowed seniors, teenagers away from home for the first time—show up to study with an esteemed faculty made up of prizewinning playwrights, actors, and historians; drunkards and perverts; members of the cultural elite; unknown nobodies, midlist somebodies, and legitimate stars—a place where drum circles happen on the beach at midnight, clothing optional. One of the attendees is a forty-one-year-old painting student named Amy O’Donnell. Amy is a mother of three, unhappily married to a brutish Wall Street titan who runs a multibillion-dollar investment fund and commutes to work via helicopter. Rich and Amy met at the conference a year ago, shared a moment of passion, then spent the winter exchanging inappropriate texts and emails and counting the days until they could see each other again. Now they’re back.

Once more, Rich finds himself, in this seaside paradise, worrying about his family’s nights without him and trying not to think about his book, now out of print, or his existence as an illustrator at a glossy magazine about to go under, or his back taxes, or the shameless shenanigans of his colleagues at this summer make-out festival, or his own very real desire for love and human contact. He can’t decide whether Amy is going to rescue or destroy him.

We're not used to hearing middle-aged men complain and whine about their careers and family. It's fine though, I guess they should be able to, especially their careers. But it's hard to feel compassion when he complains about his wife whose still breastfeeding a two month old infant, while dealing with two toddlers under five 24/7. Most of the time I bet he can walk ten feet and not have a kid attached to some part of his body. He then attends a two-week conference at a New England location near the ocean, during the summer. It's not paradise but he's unencumbered, he flirts, uses his brain, eating utensils and sleeps mostly alone. His career may be on hold but he can work to fix that! Did three small human bodies pass through his body? I don't think so! The Book is very well written, and I understand he's depressed. Stop whining, get counseling, some antidepressants and go help your wife who's going back to work. Life's tough, we've all been there. The Book is great. He needs to get ready, those kids will grow up to be teenagers. Hey Rich, you better get ready for that!

Insightful, funny, brilliant writing. Best novel I've read this year.

If you read the book blurb on this one, you already know the story.

This was a book that I thought could have been wrapped up a lot sooner. There was so much hand wringing and angst among the characters. None of them were particularly likeable.

It was just too self involved and rambling for me.

Unique writing style and pretty good story. Two lead characters well developed and realistic. Would have rated higher if the book had ended earlier. The current ending goes on too long and is too drawn out for me. It adds little value and I feel is at odds with the rest of the story. Left me with a bad taste.

I was looking for a book that would make me laugh and this book didn't disappoint. A definite laugh out loud who cares type of book.

I thought the main character was too cynical and unlikable for me to enjoy the book. I probably shouldn't have requested this book, it's not my cup of tea.

What am amazing writer Klam is! Through the eyes of Rich, a once-famous cartoonist--now considered a 42-year-old "has been," we see what it is like to be in the midst of a mid-life crisis while he is teaching at his yearly conference of the arts. Worried about his wife who no longer seems to love him, his two young children whom he adores but feels their energy sapping his life force, he falls into the arms of the young woman he met at the conference the year before. Both have marital issues, both desire sexual intimacy, both push and pull leaving them alienated from each other and the society to which they crave to belong. Adultery, monogamy, children, depression, pain...what doesn't this book address? Anyone who's felt alone in a marriage or relationship can relate to this novel--or really anyone who's human--Klam's biting humor is relentless as he addresses what it's like to be human and attempt to relate to other flawed humans.

This just wasn't the right book for me. I was drawn in by the quick summary of a washed up cartoonist whose only escape from his dull everyman life is a week-long "creative" conference where he carries on an affair with another married artist. For whatever reason, that premise I found interesting enough to request the ARC. Within the first few chapters, I was drawn in with the beautiful descriptions of the seaside town and the low life "faculty" at this artists retreat conference. However, after just a bit longer with the book, my interest and reading pace waned dramatically. It all became so repetitive--pages upon pages describing every faculty member and student, not that you'll be able to keep any of them straight--and quite frankly I quickly came to despise the protagonist Rich. He's horribly selfish, whiny, and quite frankly pathetic. While I started off in his corner, who hasn't feared being replaced professionally by their younger hotter version?, it didn't take long for me to just want this guy to succeed in his dalliance with his belt and beam.
This was another of those books that caused me to perform a happy dance of relief when I finally reached the end. So many days of struggling through the rambling prose, only for THAT ending? Ugh. Best part of this book is its cover.

This is not a book to read when you’re already having a bad day because the tone is a bit of a mood killer. It’s a slow pace with few light moments, a bit of humor and a whole lot of drama.

In some ways it’s a commentary on modern American life. People trapped in relationships they no longer seem to want but won’t leave due to finances, kids, societal pressures, etc. Affairs that occur because people can’t just leave. Too much money, not enough. No sex, rare sex or just not great sex. Is monogamy doomed? Why do people get married or have kids when it seems to come with so many problems? When do we grow out of our dreams or do we ever? It’s rare these days I dive into a piece of fiction that has me asking existential questions as I flip pages. This book definitely made me view my own life through a different lens and examine my own opinions and biases.

Klam digs deep in the character development area refusing to settle for stereotypes even as he creates mirrors of the human condition. It’s as if he hopes we’ll see something of ourselves in these broken and flawed people in order to force us to ask the uncomfortable questions.

It’s not exactly something you’d pick up to read on the beach or when you’re just trying to kill time but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t delve into it; even your brain is a muscle that needs flexing to stay active.

This book attempts to take adultery and make it funny. It fell short, in my opinion. There were some humorous parts but I felt dislike for the characters so that negatively impacted my enjoyment of the book.

I struggled through but not the most enjoyable book I have read. The character Rich, is interesting and complicated, but he is so negative, feeling sorry for himself. It was too introspective for me.

If people were happy with their lives, if they weren't having to deal with crises of conscience, relationships, and faith, what would that mean for the state of fiction? Much in the way that evil characters are more fun to read (and write) about, unhappy characters definitely provide a richer mine from which to build a novel.

Rich Fischer, the protagonist of Matthew Klam's Who is Rich?, is definitely unhappy. At one point he was a cartoonist of some renown, but he now works as an illustrator at a magazine which covers politics and culture.

"Illustration is to cartooning as prison sodomy is to pansexual orgy. Not the same thing at all."

The only thing really left from those better days is that every summer he travels to New England to teach a four-day cartooning workshop at a week-long arts conference. It's not the most fulfilling opportunity, but it does get him away from his family and from the constant problems weighing on his mind and his psyche.

"I wasn't a teacher. I didn't belong here. I'd ditched my family and driven nine hours up the East Coast in Friday summer highway traffic so I could show off in front of strangers, most of whom had no talent, some of whom weren't even nice, while I got paid almost nothing."

Rich and his wife Robin are unhappily married and on the verge of utterly resenting each other full time. Their two young children have their own dysfunctions, and how the couple chooses to handle (and/or ignore) these issues adds more strain to their exasperating relationship. Money is always tight, their sex life is almost non-existent, and both are often bitter, about their relationship and their lives.

"Was it a good life? Was I more joyful, sensitive, and compassionate in my deeply entangled commitment to them? Was there anything better than seeing the world through the eyes of my nutty kids? Was my obligation to Robin the most sincere form of love?...Was this as close to love as I was ever going to get? The closer I got, the more I wanted to destroy the things I loved. Something rose up in me, threatening me. I had to deflect it somehow."

There is one bright light drawing him back to the workshop this year—Amy. Amy is a painting student whom Rich met at last year's workshop, and they shared a flirtation, a little bit more than that, and then spent the winter alternately texting and longing to see each other, and punishing themselves for wanting this. She lives in a wholly different world than Rich—Amy is married to an extremely wealthy, reasonably loathsome Wall Street magnate who is barely home, and rarely pays attention to her and their children when he is. And as much as Amy wants more, wants something different, she isn't sure if she deserves that, and if so, if Rich is that something different.

This is an interesting meditation on monogamy, marriage, children, middle-age, financial success, and whether abandoning your dreams for something more stable makes you a sell-out or a failure. It's also an exploration of what kind of happiness we should expect from life—should you take what you're given or should you hope for more?

Klam is an excellent writer. I read his story collection, Sam the Cat: And Other Stories, about 17 years ago, and he's been one of those writers I've been waiting for years to write another book. This definitely didn't disappoint, although it's a bit more of a downer than I expected. Given the subject matter, it's not too surprising, but I felt the book flowed a lot more slowly because of its morose tone. There are moments of lightheartedness, even humor, but the dilemma that Rich and Amy find themselves in, and Rich's own struggles tend to take more precedence, at least early on.

Who is Rich? definitely made me think, and helped me keep the challenges of my own life in perspective. And isn't that why we read sometimes, to make us feel better about our lives than those the characters are living?

NetGalley and Random House provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

I thought this book was, in and of itself, well written. Great descriptions, interesting premise, relatable scenario, cool drawings.

Here's the problem...Who is Rich? He's someone I don't want to spend any time with. While I totally get what's going on in his head and why he's feeling the way he's feeling (yes, Rich, being middle aged and married isn't always a barrel of laughs), he's basically a self-absorbed asshole for the ENTIRE book. (Amy gets 6 Oxy and Rich eats/destroys three just cause he wants to get high? For that alone he deserves a kick in the balls.) Also he seems to hold such contempt for all of the characters he encounters (including Amy to some extent.) He hates himself, his life, his wife, his lover (off and on) everyone at the conference, the young hotshot poet, most of his students, etc. So spending a lot of time with this dude was a bit of a chore. That bummed me out and sadly made the read way less pleasant.

If you like books about self-absorbed, middle-aged, adulterous white men mourning their lost youth, then this is the book for you. Although the main character, Rich Fischer, spends most of the book whining about his first-world problems, WHO IS RICH? is strangely compelling, perhaps because some of Rich's angst is shared by most of us who have survived married life with small children. A washed-up cartoonist, Rich is broke, with an angry wife and two kids under the age of five. His mistress is the wife of a billionaire and Rich spends much of the book careening between desire, envy and disgust with regard to her. Klam is a talented writer but ultimately, I just wanted Rich to pull himself together and act like an adult. Fans of THE CORRECTIONS and WONDER BOYS will enjoy this book.

An overall enjoyable read, well narrated and smoothly written from a talented author. Interspersed with swirls of humor and veins of anguish, this remains nonetheless a deeper study of the bittersweet triumphs and conflicts of daily modern (American) life.