THE LOSER

by Borden Deal ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A doubledecker novel, bulging with politics and sex, is sufficiently energetic and aggressive to retain its hold on the reader's interest from its start to its finish 600 pages later, even though there are few improvement values. The loser is John ookman, a country boy with a small law practice in Tupelo (this is the Mason-Dixon ) whose record has been downhill all the way. He is chosen by five prominent men (a University president, The Company overlord , a newspaper editor, etc. etc.) to run in a primary to dislodge the long entrenched Governor of the state by forcing a run off. Governor Daddy Williams is ""like an old white coon... started out smart and the longer he lasts, the smarter he gets"". Still the loser can be enough of a winner to defeat him. In these weeks which precede the primary Bookman is not only politically active; he becomes involved with Susie Prentiss, hired to help him on his compaign, and Nancy Drew, the daughter of the University president, to whom he has a ""Madonna-whore reaction""--who both attracts and repels him. Her father, in trying to keep his daughter away from him, is ready to break him; Daddy Williams tries to buy him off; but he comes through after the primary as the front runner until a last minute reversal (he is cornored on the integration issue) defeats him. There are however compensations; his marriage to Nancy which was at first an expedient proves to be more, and he sheds his own inner sense of failure.... Proving the dictum that politics indeed makes bedfellows, this really puts out a great deal of what is tagged here as ""automatic lechery"". As such, it is very male in its appeal.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964

Categories: FICTION