Unemployment Benefits (Kindle Edition)

Bob Frey
Van Fleet Books (2011)
ASIN: B004J170AO
Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (6/11)

 

Feeling down on his luck, depressed and angry about being let go from his job, Walter Milton does not have enough to do to keep him busy.  He just has to make sure that he is home in time to start dinner for his working wife. Too depressed to job hunt, he spends his days wandering around fantasizing about killing people. Taking things one step further, he illegally buys a gun.  This greatly increases the likelihood that he could actually live out one of his murderous dreams.  As his fantasies and reality collide, Walter believes that he has done something horrible.

Feeling both repentant and fearful of being caught and becoming someone’s sex toy in prison, Walter starts to snap out of his fantasy world and begins to make sincere efforts to find work.  Even as he gets his life back in order, his fantasy world still has a tendency to creep back into his thoughts.  Will he actually do it, or won’t he? That is the question.

Having experienced episodes of unemployment myself, I can understand how Walter could feel too depressed to go looking for work.  Futile was the word that came to mind when I read this story.  Especially since I suspected that his daydreaming might have played a role in being fired. Even if Walter didn’t see it this way, I did.  So instead of doing something to better himself, he dreams up ways to kill people. Not very productive, however, since this is a fictional story, I found it to be highly entertaining.

The message here is about the importance of keeping yourself too busy to have time to dream up ways of killing people.  “Unemployment Benefits” is another fun read from Bob Frey.

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