by John Curry ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 17, 2018
A gritty, often gross tale of a desperate ne’er-do-well.
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In this debut novel, an alcoholic gambler gets the chance to make money on the other side of the table.
When the housing market collapses and destroys Tim’s dream of flipping an old Philadelphia dwelling—and the portion of his savings he spent to acquire it—he abandons the property to his creditors and moves to Atlantic City to try “to play poker for a living.” Turns out that this is easier said than done, as Tim learns once he starts running bad. “What does ‘running bad’ mean?” he asks readers. “It means losing $50,000 in just under three months at middle stakes poker. It means a $2700 chicken sandwich—that’s the chicken sandwich you eat right after you’ve just lost $2700 right before lunchtime.” He’s also gained 30 pounds and developed a crippling addiction to alcohol while routinely entertaining ideas of drinking himself to death as a means of escaping his troubles. He tries to stay out of Atlantic City by squatting in his own foreclosed row house in Philadelphia, but he’s driven away when a neighborhood flood sends “raw sewage gurgling up through the basement’s drainage system” and he’s beset by a biblical plague of flies. He returns to Atlantic City and has just hit rock bottom when he gets an offer from “the world’s most inconspicuous loan shark,” Brian: running an underground card game in midtown Manhattan. It’s illegal and it’s rigged against the players—just like the casinos, Wall Street, and the rest of America. Tim agrees and is quickly dropped into a world of rakes, vigs, rich college kids, vague threats, and Russian floor men, where everything is too expensive and fools are easily parted with their money. For once Tim is on the winning side of a hustle—at least until, as happens with every hustle, the floor collapses out from under him. Curry’s prose deftly captures Tim in all his down-and-out glory. Like most literary drunks, he’s equal parts philosopher (“The secret behind all class conflict and social instability in the Western hemisphere lies within the walls of this American public convenience store”) and wince-inducing cautionary tale (“After about six more hours of trying to blind myself, I plod my way to the bathroom, as it seems the safest, most logical place to have a seriously dark moment”). Tim is offended by the casual racism of others, though he is a frequent source of it, and he rarely meets a woman who doesn’t cause him to go on at some length about the ways in which she disgusts him. Tim’s misadventures evoke the long tradition of vagabond literature practiced by writers like George Orwell, Hunter S. Thompson, Denis Johnson, and others. While Tim’s story will be compelling enough for fans of that genre, Curry does not successfully excavate enough humanity from the protagonist’s fringe experiences to warrant all the misanthropy and exploitative leering. The connections between the 2008 financial crisis, gambling, and addiction are fertile, but the author doesn’t quite tie them together in a satisfying way.
A gritty, often gross tale of a desperate ne’er-do-well.Pub Date: June 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73241-121-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: The Okie Doke Book Publishing Corporation
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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