Steve Anwyll - In wakeful, rhythmic prose, Anwyll writes a mirror for our double vision and the selves we don't want ourselves to see. There's no getting out of Welfare

Steve Anwyll, Welfare, Tyrant Books, 2019.
excerpt


Welfare is wholly made up of four-line paragraphs and has a cadence that is uniquely its own. A high school student leaves his parents’ home to live on his own with friends and with the help of government aid. The narrator becomes your best friend on the first page.
I walk down the slight slope of their driveway. A backpack full of t-shirts and socks and underwear and books on my back. I have $50 and 2 packs of cigarettes in the pocket of my army surplus jacket. But no lighter. You can’t have everything I tell myself.


“Steve Anwyll's entrancing novel about a 16-year-old on welfare surprised and moved me, made me smile and laugh a lot, and increased my appreciation for life. I recommend it and look forward to reading it again.” –Tao Lin

In wakeful, rhythmic prose, Anwyll writes a mirror for our double vision and the selves we don't want ourselves to see. There's no getting out of Welfare. The voice stays in your blood. - Mila Jaroniec


When Stan turns 16, he decides that he can no longer take the fighting with his indifferent dad’s new wife, and he hits the road in Anwyll’s solid debut. His sketchy plan involves moving in with free-spirited friend Greg, 20, whose life in his small Canadian fishing village on Lake Erie is not so idyllic up close. Greg’s all-night benders and Stan’s inability to pay his share of the rent spell an end to this arrangement. He ends up with another friend, sharing a beach house, applies for welfare, and gets a caseworker. From there, it’s slowly downhill: his welfare application fails; he finds another apartment with an explosive landlord; school becomes a struggle because Stan’s poverty means he rarely gets enough to eat. He develops a crush on his caseworker, who sends him to a tough counselor, who enrolls him in a resume writing workshop, and so on. A series of demeaning jobs, financial panics, and insecure living situations follow. Anwyll’s coming-of-age novel sometimes reads more like sociopolitical allegory, but the authenticity of its first-person voice, and of its plot, which moves in deliberate, subtle steps, immerses the reader in Stan’s struggles. Stan’s story resonates with relevance and heart. - Publishers Weekly


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