Pay As You Go (McSweeney’s), the debut novel by Trinidad-born Eskor David Johnson, propels a protagonist with a shifty past through the fictional city of Polis, chronicling his survival through witty and often madcap stratagems. Pay As You Go contemplates the possibilities of abundant aliveness in desperate circumstances, fuelled by Johnson’s urbane and reflective approach to narrative prose. As Slide, the book’s antihero, shows the reader in frequently hilarious turns, no home exists but the one we make for ourselves.