Jackpot [Paperback]

Tsipi Keller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2004

Fiction. "A Bahamian vacation turns into a nightmarish dreamworld in Tsipi Keller's smart, sly JACKPOT. Maggie has long been cowed by her beautiful friend Robin, so when Robin leaves Paradise Island for a spur-of-the-moment sailing trip, Maggie has a chance to shine. Instead, she descends into wild gambling and even wilder sex, though she somehow retains her innocence. Keller expertly charts Maggie's transformation in this accomplished and oddly gripping novel"--Publisher's Weekly.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Jackpot is a wonder of a book. It is irresistibly fascinating -- painfully fascinating. -- Harry Mathews

Keller expertly charts Maggie's transformation in this accomplished and oddly gripping novel. -- Publisher's Weekly

The story of Maggie, Jackpot’s main character, achieves a Dostoevskian power that unsettles the soul. -- Jaime Manrique

This book is addictive, intense --- a psychological page-turner that doesn't miss a beat. An exceptional work of fiction. -- Jesse Kornbluth/Bookreporter.com

This marvelously engaging novel is wickedly readable, psychologically astute and drolly knowing. -- Phillip Lopate

About the Author

Tsipi Keller was born in Prague, raised in Israel, and has been living in the United States since 1974. Her short fiction, and her poetry translations, have appeared in many journals and anthologies; her novels, The Prophet of Tenth Street (1995) and Leverage (1997) were translated into Hebrew and published by Sifriat Poalim. (Currently, The Prophet of Tenth Street is being translated into German.) Keller's translation of Dan Pagis's posthumous collection, Last Poems, was published by The Quarterly Review of Literature (1993), and her translation of Irit Katzir's posthumous collection, And I Wrote Poems, was published by Carmel in 2000. Among her awards are: A National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two New York Foundation for the Arts grants, and an Armand G. Erpf award from Columbia University. Her novels RETELLING (2006) and JACKPOT (2004) were published by Spuyten Duyvil.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil (September 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972066217
• ISBN-13: 978-0972066211
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,047,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tsipi Keller was born in Prague, raised in Israel, and has been living in the U.S. since 1974. The author of eight books, she is the recipient of several literary prizes, including a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Award. Her novels include "Retelling" and "Jackpot"; and her most recent translation collections are: "Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry"; and "The Hymns of Job & Other Poems." Her novel "The Prophet of Tenth Street" will be out in early 2012.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shortcuts to Paradise and the Road to Hell, June 29, 2005

By 

Andrew Kaufman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jackpot (Paperback)

On its most basic level, JACKPOT involves a character who feels she is missing out on life, and, while on a trip to the Bahamas, tries to remedy this by gambling, drinking, and fornicating her way to paradise. The novel can be seen as a cautionary tale about what happens to someone who thinks the whole world has been having a party to which she wasn't invited, and that the way to crash it is to ditch what meagre sense of self she has.

Encountering JACKPOT is like entering a vortex; the protagonist's
compulsive, self-destructive behavior and the reader's compulsion
to follow this from page to page start to feel like one and the same. The novel is similar, in terms of this effect, to Sylvia Plath's BELL JAR--we don't simply observe the descent toward madness, but are carried along and seduced, a step at a time, by the protagonist's manic, internal logic, until we realize we're making the journey ourselves. The detail and emotional accuracy with which Keller captures the check and flow of her character's thought processes and actions in the hotel casino, as her hopes, desperation, alcohol consumption, and losses keep pace with one another give JACKPOT a subterranean, almost Dostoyevskian feel.

From the start, Maggie, the protagonist, sees herself as surrounded by yet barred from various forms of what she takes to be "paradise." She feels that the neighborhood she lives in is not one of the "right" neighborhoods, and, unlike the acquaintances she envies, she doesn't move within a circle of beautiful friends she assumes get everything they want sexually and otherwise. The novel is mainly set on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and when her friend, Robin, is talking Maggie into accompanying her on this trip, what closes the deal is Robin's off-handed comment about having "f***ed her brains out" the last time she was there. The title, beyond its immediate reference to what Maggie hopes to win in the casino, comes to reflect different forms of the dreamed-for or lusted-after paradise from which Maggie craves to end her exile.

The original literary characters to be obsessed by what proved to be a false paradise from which they felt excluded, and who found what they thought was a neat short-cut which ended up taking them in the opposite direction, were Milton's Adam and Eve. The imaginative brilliance of JACKPOT is reflected in its ability to reveal and make new this archetypal pattern, while seeming to focus so relentlessly and exclusively on the here and now immediacy of Maggie and her small world. This is an extraordinary achievement, made even more so by the extent to which it seems hidden, at first, within the fabric of the book's immediacy and accessibility.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars accomplished and oddly gripping novel, June 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Jackpot (Paperback)

From The Critics
Publisher's Weekly

A Bahamian vacation turns into a nightmarish dreamworld in Tsipi Keller's smart, sly Jackpot. Maggie has long been cowed by her beautiful friend Robin, so when Robin leaves Paradise Island for a spur-of-the-moment sailing trip, Maggie has a chance to shine. Instead, she descends into wild gambling and even wilder sex, though she somehow retains her innocence. Keller expertly charts Maggie's transformation in this accomplished and oddly gripping novel. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very original work - nothing like it, October 18, 2004

By 

virginia woolf "tara" (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jackpot (Paperback)

i just finished reading jackpot and feel as though i've been away in some exotic land and have come back, enriched and wiser, and more sober. jackopt is honest and brutal in ways i like a book to be honest and brutal.