‘Such Kindness’ by Andre Dubus III   (2023) – 311 pages

After a promising start, white guy Tom Lowe Jr. has become one of life’s losers. After high school, he worked hard, started his own carpentry business, got married to girlfriend Ronnie, and built houses including his own. Ronnie and he have one son Drew. But then they got sub-primed in the financial crisis of 2008 and lost the house and his own business. Shortly thereafter Tom fell three stories off the roof of a house on which he was working, and after that he started taking opioids to deal with the constant pain. He got addicted. His wife Ronnie divorced him and got remarried to a well-to-do businessman. He rarely sees his son.

Now Tom lives by himself in a cheap apartment subsidized by the government. He has been off the opioids for six years now but still cannot work due to the pain. He lives next to a tattooed single mother Trina struggling to bring up her three untamed kids. Tom is still bitter at the banker Mike Anderson who sub-primed him into taking an adjustable mortgage rate loan and thus caused Tom to lose his house to the bank. Tom is disgusted that only one banker in the U.S. was ever arrested in the Great Recession subprime scandal of 2008. Now Tom is considering committing a financial fraud himself. Tom is still the unlucky man blaming everyone else for his problems.

However a change gradually comes over Tom. He begins to realize that the people around him have their share of problems too, and maybe he can help them by listening attentively to them. He realizes that he probably will never be able to do manual work again and he begins to accept his fate. Instead of being the unlucky man blaming everyone else for his problems, Tom will empathize with others and he might even be able to help those around him.

I did not find these instances where Tom shows his new empathy toward others entirely convincing. Perhaps these encounters are a little too earnest without a trace of fun.

Tom writes to Mike Andrews, the banker of Tom’s disastrous subprime loan, forgiving him. In actual fact, this letter probably would hurt the banker more than a punch in the face would have.

In a way, this novel reminded me of ‘The Christmas Carol’ where Ebenezer Scrooge finally began to see the light and awakened Christmas morning a totally changed man. However ‘Such Kindness’ lacks Dickens’ light yet moving touch, and Tom Lowe’s redemption remains unconvincing even after over three hundred pages.

Grade:   B-