On Thanksgiving Day a freegan couple living off the grid in Manhattan, a once prominent linguist struggling with midlife, and a New Jersey debt-collection magnate with a second chance at getting things right randomly and briefly collide as the weight of their desires ultimately undoes each of them, leaving them to pick up the pieces from what's left behind.

While we could see what Miles was trying to do in this novel exploring trash and how people reinvent themselves, NUBClub didn't think Miles pulled it off. Miles needs this book to be funny, because following around a group of freegans who stumble through romantic issues needed that lightness, but we just didn't find the book funny. We found the Elwin sections of the book the most enjoyable, but even those weren't compelling enough to hold our interest. Yes, yes, we can see what Miles was saying about the trash we create and how bad it is that we are so wasteful in so many ways, but the characters were alternately pathetic or sanctimonious, and none of them were likeable. The arcs they take seemed contrived to us, and while Micah's arc through India was sufficient to make her a real character, most of the people in the story remain thin and don't develop. It's not a terrible book, but it just doesn't have enough of any of its part -- its humor, its message, its conflicts, or its drama -- to make it worth reading. There are better books on trash and on ethics, and we would recommend those more.