Osborne masterfully recreates the atmosphere of casinos as well as the psychology of baccarat players—and leaves readers...
The titular “small player” of Osborne’s (The Forgiven, 2012, etc.) new novel gambles at the casinos in and around Macau—and exclusively plays the high stakes game of baccarat.
Doyle, our narrator and frequently known as “Lord Doyle”—especially when he’s coming off a winning streak—has attained his money dubiously; he’s an English lawyer who embezzled a pile of cash from a vulnerable and trusting older woman. Doyle doesn’t dwell on this part of his past, however, instead fixating on the smoky rooms and betting parlors of Macau, where he’s surrounded by other equally obsessed gamblers. We meet an intimidating woman known as “Grandma,” who every night drops thousands of Hong Kong dollars to get revenge on her philandering husband. Doyle’s most important connection is to Dao-Ming, a call girl with a proverbial heart of gold, the only truly human relationship Doyle is able to establish. His preoccupation—and at times his obsession—is the game of baccarat. We learn that each hand is inherently short, and the drama emerges from the enormous sums won and lost on the turn of a card. We witness Doyle’s status change radically from loser to winner; since a “natural nine” is the best possible hand in baccarat, Doyle becomes something of a celebrity when he starts putting together hand after hand of these nines—and the proprietors of the casinos develop an understandable interest in this increase in his “luck.” With his fortune mounting, Doyle plays one final hand—and decides to bet everything on the outcome.
Osborne masterfully recreates the atmosphere of casinos as well as the psychology of baccarat players—and leaves readers eager to try their luck at the game.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3797-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.
Veteran Godwin’s latest (Grief Cottage, 2017, etc.) tracks a half-century friendship between two very different yet oddly compatible women.
The dean and dorm mistress of Lovegood College pair Feron Hood and Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, hoping that sunny, outgoing Merry will be a steadying influence on Feron, who has recently lost her alcoholic mother and fled from an abusive stepfather. The girls do indeed form a lasting bond even though Merry leaves after a single semester to run the family tobacco farm when her parents are killed in a plane crash. They have both taken their first steps as writers under the guidance of Literature and Composition teacher Maud Petrie, and during their mostly long-distance relationship, Feron will be goaded to write three novels by Merry’s occasional magazine publications; she is at work on a fourth about their friendship as the book closes. The two women rarely meet in person, and Feron is bad about answering letters, but we see that they remain important in each other’s thoughts. Godwin unfolds their stories in a meditative, elliptical fashion, circling back to reveal defining moments that include tragic losses, unexpected love, and nurturing friendships. Self-contained, uncommunicative Feron seems the more withholding character, but Merry voices one of the novel’s key insights: “Everyone has secrets no one else should know” while Feron reveals essential truths about her life in her novels. Maud Petrie and Lovegood dean Susan Fox, each of whom has secrets of her own, continue as strong presences for Feron and Merry, who have been shaped by Lovegood more enduringly than they might have anticipated. Feron’s courtly Uncle Rowan and blunt Aunt Mabel, Merry’s quirky brother Ritchie, devoted manager Mr. Jack, and a suave Navy veteran with intimate links to both women are among the many nuanced characters drawn by Godwin with their human contradictions and complexities on full display. A closing letter from Dean Fox movingly reiterates the novel’s conjoined themes of continuity and change.
Intelligent, reflective, satisfying fiction from an old master.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63286-822-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A bold attempt, nevertheless, by a gifted writer whose own future looms promisingly indeed.
A compelling protagonist and a lyrical style grounded in precise observation of the physical world: these are the hallmarks of Idaho author Doerr’s complex, ambitious first novel.
As in the stories of his highly praised debut (The Shell Collector, 2002), Doerr explores the tensions between scientific objectivity and emotional vulnerability—here in the story of David Winkler, a trained hydrologist whose understanding of predictability in natural process is unsettled by mysteries that unfold from his own nature. For David experiences prophetic dreams of mischance occurring in both humdrum and catastrophic forms. We first meet him on an airplane when, at age 59, he’s returning to the US from 25 years of self-exile and servitude in the Caribbean Grenadine Islands. Working through extended flashbacks that comprise most of the text here, Doerr patiently fills in the blanks. Growing up a scholarly, solitary youth in Anchorage, Alaska, David “dreamed” his chance meeting with the woman he would wed—then, finding her unhappily married, persuaded her to accompany him to a new life in Ohio. Fathering a daughter (Grace), then dreaming the flood in which he himself accidentally drowns her, David fled his marriage and future, booked passage on a Caribbean-bound steamer, then spent an embattled quarter-century laboring to return to obligations he had shed, meanwhile acquiring a new “family” and a second chance at happiness. About Grace possesses a seductive symbolic intensity, and abounds with gorgeous descriptions and metaphors (“The sea teething” on a coral reef; “the million distant candles of the stars”). But it’s much too long, and is significantly marred by its climactic momentum toward a reconciliation that simply isn’t very credible. Its protagonist’s loneliness, regret, and guilt are painfully palpable, and go a long way toward making this risky book work—but, in the end, aren’t enough.
A bold attempt, nevertheless, by a gifted writer whose own future looms promisingly indeed.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-6182-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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