I have been saddened recently to hear of the closing of some of my favorite independent bookstores. While I cannot turn my back on the library, I have decided that I will make all my future book purchases from my local store - Walden Pond Books - instead of on-line. I visited Walden Pond last weekend to buy a gift for a friend. I found the usually quiet salespeople much more vocal about suggestions - perhaps it was the individual working that day, or maybe a reflection of the slowing economy. Regardless, it worked and I bought this book which the salesperson highly recommended as one of his favorites of all time. It is the story of an 8-year old orphan who stumbles upon the game of chess and finds that she has quite the mind for it. Tevis is also the author of The Hustler and The Color of Money. So, he has experience building suspense around games. As the young girl grows, she enters herself into tournaments and fixes her sights on beating the Russian grandmasters. Along the way, she also has to come to terms with some of her addictions and her lack of guidance. The story is compelling, and even though I don't know anything about chess except how the pieces are allowed to move, I still found myself holding my breath as Tevis walked the reader through each game. I think he glossed over the young girl's difficulties with relaionships given her orphan past, and the interaction between her substance abuse and her superior chess abilities seemed too superficial. Yet, the story did work and I would recommend it as a good "sports" story (an on-line review I read called it the Rocky of the chess world), but not necessarily as a realistic female coming of age tale.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
The Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis
I have been saddened recently to hear of the closing of some of my favorite independent bookstores. While I cannot turn my back on the library, I have decided that I will make all my future book purchases from my local store - Walden Pond Books - instead of on-line. I visited Walden Pond last weekend to buy a gift for a friend. I found the usually quiet salespeople much more vocal about suggestions - perhaps it was the individual working that day, or maybe a reflection of the slowing economy. Regardless, it worked and I bought this book which the salesperson highly recommended as one of his favorites of all time. It is the story of an 8-year old orphan who stumbles upon the game of chess and finds that she has quite the mind for it. Tevis is also the author of The Hustler and The Color of Money. So, he has experience building suspense around games. As the young girl grows, she enters herself into tournaments and fixes her sights on beating the Russian grandmasters. Along the way, she also has to come to terms with some of her addictions and her lack of guidance. The story is compelling, and even though I don't know anything about chess except how the pieces are allowed to move, I still found myself holding my breath as Tevis walked the reader through each game. I think he glossed over the young girl's difficulties with relaionships given her orphan past, and the interaction between her substance abuse and her superior chess abilities seemed too superficial. Yet, the story did work and I would recommend it as a good "sports" story (an on-line review I read called it the Rocky of the chess world), but not necessarily as a realistic female coming of age tale.
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