A darkly comic descent into Arkansas’s surreal criminal underworld through the eyes of a hapless, debt‑ridden hypochondriac
Couch People is a feverish, darkly comic novel that captures the anxious intensity of a world obsessed with wellness and control even as life keeps spinning into chaos. Prince, a debt-ridden drug dealer on probation, clings to vitamins and homeopathic rituals while stumbling through a surreal Arkansas underworld filled with criminal volatility and sudden violence.
As Prince fights to stay out of prison, recover his stolen money, and hold onto a fragile hope for love, he moves through a landscape populated by unforgettable misfits and bizarre dangers, including a system where snitches are cremated, turned into diamonds, and set into convicts’ teeth. Will Burns blends his satirical bite with unexpected tenderness, creating a narrative that prizes raw interiority and absurd humor over neat redemption. Couch People becomes a propulsive fever dream about love, loss, and the impossible effort to impose order on a world that refuses to make sense, inviting readers to embrace the beautiful mess of being alive without a manual, a map, or mercy.
“Couch People by Will Burns is a darkly comic novel, written in a high-voltage style. Try imagining a stoned Nabokov slumming in Arkansas among the outliers and ne’er-do-wells of Breaking Bad—only stranger than that, and funnier. Burns is a wickedly beautiful writer.”
–Robert Boswell, author of Houston Noir
“Strap yourself in—Couch People is part On the Road, part Neuromancer, but utterly original. Over the course of several days we follow Prince as he navigates several crises, most of his own making. We overhear what is in his mind, and what we hear is both terrifying and wildly funny.
If you’ve ever passed someone on the sidewalk who appears lost in this new reality we all find ourselves in, this book could be your instruction manual."
–Nick Flynn, PEN Award-winning author of AnotherBullshit Night in Suck City
"Funny, smart, artful, and darkly twisted in all the right places, Will Burn’s Couch People made me laugh and gasp in the same choked breath. It’s a bit like the Three Stooges crossed with William S. Burroughs, if, that is, Burroughs had developed a penchant for purple drank instead of heroin. The prose here is wildly inventive, with tugs and leaps and punchlines that come at you sideways—just reading the sentences gave me a contact high. A real kicker of a debut. Will Burns is a thrilling and truly singular talent."
–Dino Enrique Piacentini, author of Invasion of the Daffodils