NUMBERS

A massive lottery jackpot prompts the denizens of a New Mexico city to contemplate riches and greed.

In Sever’s debut novel, when a lottery’s potential payout climbs as high as $1 billion, it seems as if all the residents of Albuquerque have random chances and massive payoffs on their minds. The Rev. Jon Holiday and his wife, Grace, for instance, have differing views on the subject. Jon attempts to take a distant, philosophical, even slightly disapproving attitude, reminding his wife that greed is the root of all evil, whereas Grace never misses an opportunity to tell her husband that their strip-mall storefront church is perennially low on funds and could immensely benefit from such an astronomical injection of cash. “Every Monday morning,” when the benevolent reverend is at his desk, his wife “counts out the meager Sunday collection in an irritating whisper before depositing the money at the bank.” Lin Tanaka of the Zeniscapes landscaping company tries to take a Zen-like stance on the chance of winning. Guy Springfield wishes his accountant neighbor Nick Sterling good luck in the lottery and is sternly told that winning has nothing to do with luck: “It’s about crunching numbers and reducing the odds to zero—pure mathematics.” The author moves his intriguing story forward with economical skill, believable philosophical inquiry, and a good deal of dry humor. When a pious member of the congregation mentions that Grace is well named, for instance, she muses: “Her dear mother was flying high on magic mushrooms at Woodstock and heard Grace Slick singing ‘White Rabbit’ with Jefferson Airplane when her perfectly named daughter was conceived.” Sever also skillfully explores the characters’ yearnings. Nick is so certain he’s cracked the math of the lottery that he’s already dreaming of his post-victory fame: “In anticipation of that, he’s prepared an eight-page treatise on the Grand Sterling Algorithm for Science. Of course, he simplified the mathematics for his TED Talk which he’s confident will happen.” The book deftly builds to a climax that’s both funny and genuinely touching.

An effective and amusing lottery tale.