Bleak, sad story of people who can not catch a break. Freddie McCall is broke and broken by the horrible life he leads, unable to think of a way to get free of his mountain of debt and his nightmare-fuel jobs. Leroy is a comatose patient who is locked in his own head where he's decided to go into a fictional world he created to keep from going insane.

The intersection of his horrible past, his tormented present, and Freddie's late-capitalist dysfunction that only barely resembles a life is through the care home where they sort-of exist in juxtaposition. Pauline, a downtrodden nurse and caregiver to a deeply terrible father, winds her way down grocery store aisles as she creates and completes checklist after checklist. No one is getting out of here whole, or even necessarily alive.

Author Vlautin, a musician by trade, eschews song-type restrictions on his prose for a maximalist moment-by-moment account of each character's separate bad-dream life. The accumulation of detail and the internal lives of these average people build a crooked, ramshackle story-verse that each is unaware that they share with the others.

Be aware that there is no redemptive arc or happy resolution in this breathtakingly honest and unsparing portrait of non-essential people doing essential work, then suffering for wanting more than the bare minimum that they can claw out of the filth and decay around them. It's a hard story but a beautiful book.

Willy Vlautin writes with a passion about the down and out, the poverty stricken, the people hanging on by their fingernails, trying to get by. And in doing so, he is really quite good at tearing your heart out.

He relates the stories of three such characters in this book, Leroy, delusional Iraq War veteran, battling demons that no one else can see; Pauline, a hospital nurse who cares for her patients with the utmost attention and compassion, and after work tries to also care for her ornery father, trying to overcome her own desperate thoughts; and Freddy, whose lack of health insurance bankrupted him as he had to spend everything he had on his young daughter's serious medical condition. Now he works two jobs trying to get out of the hole. Vlautin brings the stories of these and other related characters to life in this novel. This is my fourth novel by this author and he hasn't disappointed yet. ( )

The Free is a novel that follows three people as they deal with various issues in their life, including PTSD, a failing economy, drug abuse, runaways, medical care, and the toll these issues take. Beautifully written.
First is Leroy, an Iraqi war vet who tries to commit suicide. While in the hospital, he has vivid dreams about his former girlfriend, Jeanette. His mother, Darla, keeps vigil.
Next is Freddie, who works at the group home where Leroy lives. Freddie finds Leroy after the suicide attempt. Freddie also works at a paint store, keeping it afloat. Freddie’s finances took a hit when his daughter was born with a medical condition, and his wife left him.
Finally, Pauline is a hospital nurse, and Leroy is her patient. Another patient, Jo, a teenage runaway, captures Pauline’s heart, and she begins to follow Jo after Jo leaves the hospital, attempting to help her. Pauline also must care for her ailing father. All of this is wearing Pauline down.
You will not forget these characters for quite some time. ( )

Willy Vlautin has been called "the patron saint of the sick and the sad" — and that's what I liked about this book. He "gets" the lives of regular people trying hard to get on and get by. ( )

Excellent craft. Closely told stories of people struggling to survive, and doing it with style, grace, struggle and loss.

I wonder who recommended? Maria's Bookshop I think. Maybe The King's English.

Glad I read it. ( )