Customer Reviews

Queen's Gambit

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It was the spring of 1983. On a long plane trip, I started THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT by Walter Tevis, a just-published novel I'd bought on impulse. And I was gobsmacked. Tevis --- author of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and THE HUSTLER (and, later, THE COLOR OF MONEY) --- had written a book that, very simply, could not be put down. The woman who would become my first wife tried to talk to me; I shushed her. A meal came; I pushed it aside. All I could do was read, straight to the end --- weeping, cheering, punching the air.

Amazingly, this novel soon went out of print. And stayed out of print for two decades. Now, at last, it's available again.

What's the fuss about? An eight-year-old orphan named Beth Harmon. Who turns out to be the Mozart of chess. Which brings her joy (she wins! people notice her!) and misery (she's alone and unloved and incapable of asking for help). So she gets addicted to pills. She drinks. She loses. And then, as 17-year-old Beth starts pulling herself together, she must face the biggest challenge of all --- a match with the world champion, a Russian of scary brilliance.

You think: This is thrilling? You think: chess? You think: Must be an "arty" novel, full of interior scenes. Wrong. All wrong.

I tell you: THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT is "Rocky" for smart people.

I tell you: You will care about Beth Harmon more than any fictional character you've encountered in years and years.

I tell you: You will grasp the wrench of loneliness --- and the power of love --- as if this book were happening to you.

Do you need to know anything about chess? Nope. Nothing. Tevis was a storyteller whose genius was to tell great stories; there's nothing between you and the people.

My bet: If you read five pages, you won't put it down. You too will weep. And cheer. And at the end, raise your fist like a fool for a little girl who never existed and a game only wimps play.

I picked up a used copy of "The Queen's Gambit" not because I was fascinated by the subject matter, but because Walter Tevis was a writing professor at Ohio University, my alma mater. (I never had him for a class, though I did interview him for a university publication.) I had never read anything by Tevis--not even his bestsellers, "The Hustler" and "The Man Who Fell to Earth"--but "The Queen's Gambit" makes me want to rush out and find every Tevis book I can. In "The Queen's Gambit," Tevis creates a singular, and singularly moving, lead character--Beth Harmon, an orphaned, alcoholic, drug-addicted teenage girl who also happens to be one of the greatest chess prodigies the world has ever seen. Left alone in the world at the age of eight, hooked on tranquilizers by the monsters who run her orphanage, Beth is buffeted on all sides by enemies and fools. She finds her only lasting solace in the black and white figures on the chessboard, living and reliving those strategies as if her life depends on it (which, in the end, it does). Beth is so real, and so heartrending, that she and her story will linger with you long after you've finished the book. The book contains a great deal of chess terminology and strategy--two things of which I am profoundly ignorant and profoundly uninterested. Yet Tevis made me feel the excitement Beth feels in playing the game, and involved me totally in her life-and-death struggle to master it. Even if you don't like chess, you will like "The Queen's Gambit." My guess is that if you love the game, you will adore "The Queen's Gambit."

Even though the notion expressed on the title of this review has been disproven throughout the years, chess is still a game where males vastly outnumber female players. This was even more pronounced at the time this book was written. But at that same time, an educational experiment by Laszlo Polgar had started, with the idea that kids can achieve exceptional achievements if they were properly trained by a specialist, from an early age. Thus, his three girls became chess players and in 1983, when Tevis wrote this novel, Susan, the eldest, was already a forced to be reckoned with. It was not until years later that the youngest of the three sisters, Judith, really proved that women can compete with men in this sport at the highest level.

I am fairly sure that the Polgar experiment is what Tevis used as the basic premise for writing this book, but then he complemented the idea with a really complex main character, which has to overcome the difficulties set to her by the cards she was dealt in life. This is a really uplifting and emotional story, and Tevis shows his skills as a writer by drawing us into the world of chess with great descriptions of the personalities that populate the royal game. And to tell you the truth, chess is just the vehicle chosen in this case, but the story could have been written with other competitive sports without losing any of its flair, since what is more important is the struggle Elizabeth Harmon undergoes during her childhood, teenage years and young adulthood.

Some people may think I have lost my mind, but I believe that those that do not play or understand chess will have a better time reading this book than serious chess players. There are two reasons for this assertion. First, the author does a great job in describing the games without giving specifics, but using instead a more general approach to the position at hand. This allows him to infuse the situations with excitement for those that would not be able to follow the action otherwise. But the second, and most important, reason is that in some of the passages in which specifics are given, there are serious mistakes. This is going to annoy chess players, while other people will not notice. I was really surprised that Pandolfini proof-read this book and did not correct some of this errors. Just to give a few examples, Tevis talks about a Sicilian defense game that starts with white moving his queen pawn two steps forward, he talks about black going into the Levenfish variation, and even mentions how the Queen's Gambit creates a more complicated middlegame than the Sicilian.

If there were no chess-related mistakes in this novel I would have given it the highest rating, since the story draws you in quickly and keeps you hooked until the end. Chess players will definitely enjoy this book, but my recommendation is to breathe deeply and try to ignore the mistakes, you will have a much better time. I was not completely successful at following my own advice, but the final result was very positive anyway.

This book wins the award for "richest portrayal of an inner life with least use of internal monologue or dialogue".

Marvelously written, this is an uncommonly insightful and rich page turner with an unforgettable protagonist.

An excellent addition to the authors resume. The one who brought us The Hustler and the Color of Money - Walter Tevis takes us on another pyschological thrill. We meet the heroine, a young lady who finds she has a gift. She can play chess and play it very well. Tevis takes us inside this prodigy's troubled and brillant mind as she finds what she is truly about. As a chessplayer... it offered me a great insight to my own thinking. I highly recommend to anyone though... like Searching for Bobby Fischer you don't need to be a chess player to enjoy or understand it... It may be better if you aren't.

This book contains the best descriptions I have read of what goes on during a mental competition. The protagonist, Beth Harmon, possesses the "perfect diamond" in her brain. Other reviewers have quibbled about her personality, but how else can a writer describe the person who lives primarily in the mind, and not in the body. The descriptions of Beth at her best and at her worst in competition are masterly. I had never hoped that any author could discover the words that would communicate the experience of being deep in the game, as Tevis has. I was lucky enough to come across this book in a temporary book store. I've read it several times, and my pleasure does not diminish.

I would not have thought it was possible to write a thriller without any guns or threat of violence. Tevis has done the job and made chess feel dynamic while he's at it.

I know reviews here on Amazon tend toward the hyperbolic (the *best* book I EVER READ and such), so I feel obliged to understate the case. This book it a treat--intelligent, well paced, well written--and I recomend it.

How can a book about a girl chess grandmaster be a pot boiling page-turner? I can only marvel at the completely unique talent Tevis displays in this book. I have never read anything even remotely like it. I am an avid reader, but I rarely read a book more than once. I read this book three times and may read it several times again. Anyone who has even a passing knowledge of chess (which is all I have) will not be able to stop reading this masterpiece after the first few pages.

I've read a lot of novels over the years, everything from "literary" work to genre fiction, and it's been quite a while since I've read a novel that kept me up all night because I couldn't put it down. I remember doing that with John Irving's The World According to Garp, and I did it with this phenomenal novel from Walter Tevis.

For years I've been curious about Tevis, but for some reason I never picked up one of his books. I've seen all of the film adaptations of his novels and perhaps I thought I wouldn't discover anything new here ... I'm not sure. I finally read The Queen's Gambit and I'm amazed Tevis isn't more of a literary icon. This is as good as anything Bradbury or any of the other "classic" modern American writers have published over the last 50 years.

I won't go into too many plot points, since a lot of reviewers have already gone there; but let me just say that this novel has all the depth and sophistication of great literature and the wire-taut tension of the best thrillers. It is smart AND exciting, and you don't have to be a chess grandmaster to appreciate the suspense of the gaming in the novel.

If you're on the fence about this, because you think you might be disappointed about an over-hyped book, don't hesitate. This is an awesome book. I will go back and read Tevis' other works too. He's a grandmaster of fiction.

I read Tevis' brilliant "Mockingbird" many years ago, went looking for his other books, and found this one. No one had read it or heard of it, and I always considered it a lost gem, re-reading it every few years. I'm glad it's being reissued. This isn't a book about chess, you don't have to know a thing about the game to enjoy the story. It's about Beth, a young orphan who discovers her chess genius by accident, nurtures it, uses it as a lifeline to pull herself into the real world after her adoption and painful adolescence. Without her, the book would be a magazine article about a chess prodigy. With her, it's a story of a young woman who doesn't really know how to live in the world, but finds a way through the pain of an incomplete childhood. If you enjoyed books like "She's Come Undone" or "The Liar's Club" you will love this one. You want to root for her, no matter what she's doing.