-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
An exuberant, fantastical odyssey, Pay as You Go wonders if what we're searching for is ever really out there.
New to town and delusionally confident, Slide imagined himself living in a glossy building with doormen and sweeping views of the skyline. Instead he's landed in a creaking, stuffy apartment with two roommates: a loping giant who hardly leaves his room, and a weight-obsessed neurotic who keeps no fewer than forty-seven lamps throughout the house, blazing at all hours.
Unwilling to accept this fate, Slide—a barber with an opaque past—embarks on a quest for the perfect apartment, pinballing through the sprawling, madcap city of Polis and its endless procession of neighborhoods. As he bounces from foldout couch to disaster-relief tent, falling in with some tough types, Slide begins to realize that he's going to have to scratch and claw just to claim a place for himself in this world—let alone a place with in-unit laundry.
Pay as You Go announces the startling talents of Eskor David Johnson, who knows that all any of us really want is a place to rest our head.
"Both lampooning city life and confessing love for it, this story is a display of prodigious storytelling talent. It rushes by with the creative adrenaline of a one-man show; it hums with an infectious joy. […] Told in a raucous vaudeville style that blends gorgeous lyrical descriptions with madcap farce, Pay As You Go is a magnetic novel." ―Foreword Reviews (starred review)
"A madcap odyssey through the hellscape that is the metropolis of the near future. […] Like Dante, Slide wanders in circles, soaking in weirdness, tragedies, and occasional flashes of beauty. And like Joyce, Johnson builds a world that, for all its improbabilities, is recognizable. […] An inventive, beautifully written debut that will leave readers wanting more."
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Johnson's unbridled debut runs in circles of accelerating grandiosity and lunacy."
―Publishers Weekly
"A brilliantly surreal and vivid feat of imagination."
―Literary Hub
"Eskor David Johnson's Pay As You Go dramatizes the important question of what is home as Slide maneuvers life's obstacles and searches for a place to live. Johnson writes with the fierce intensity of Ralph Ellison and delivers a prodigious and compelling novel with an unforgettable story. Eskor David Johnson is an extraordinary writer."
―Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed
"Pay As You Go is an exuberant, maximalist delight."
―Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
This information about Pay as You Go was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eskor David Johnson is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and the United States. His writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. A graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was the recipient of the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, the Maytag Fellowship and the Teaching-Writing Fellowship, he currently lives in New York City.
If you liked Pay as You Go, try these:
by Ed Park
Published 2026
A deadpan, wildly imaginative collection of stories that slices clean through the mundanity and absurdity of modern life, from the author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed Different Dreams.
by Lauren Acampora
Published 2016
Deliciously creepy and masterfully complex The Wonder Garden heralds the arrival of a phenomenal new talent in American fiction.
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
by Robin Sloan
Published 2013
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like: an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave, a modern-day cabinet of wonders ready to give a jolt of energy to every curious reader, no matter the time of day.
No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
