Stewart O'Nan is an unfailingly smart and affecting novelist, but never more so, I think, than when he writes about the economic struggles of ordinary folks. His great 2007 novella, Last Night at the Lobster, is about the last shift at a closing seafood restaurant in a crummy New England mall. Now, O'Nan has just published a powerful new novella about the unemployed called The Odds.

O'Nan's main characters, Marion and Art Fowler, are out of work and just about out of options. On the eve of their 30th anniversary, they're getting ready to divorce to protect what little assets remain. But, first, they've booked a deluxe suite at one of the honeymoon hotels in Niagara Falls. What a perfect setting to dramatize the ultimate middle-class nightmare: the fear of falling. Art's plan to turn things around, wanly agreed to by Marion, is to gamble their remaining cash on the roulette wheel at the hotel casino. If that scheme sounds improbable, it's nowhere near as bizarre as the quick demise of Art's 20-year career as an insurance agent. Here's how the end arrived:

"[Art] relied on his seniority to protect him. It seemed to through the early round of cuts. The new head of Human Resources ... had come for friends on both sides of his office, a brawny security guard trailing behind like a bouncer. ... The drill was simple: hand over your badge and take your personal possessions. No farewell lunch, no sheet cake, no gag gifts ...

He made it to July ...

They came for him in the morning, before coffee break."

It sounds like a scene out of Edgar Allan Poe, doesn't it? And that's O'Nan's brilliance in this novella, revealing the unemployment story to be the tale of everyday terror it really is.