Table Money [Hardcover]

Jimmy Breslin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author (Table Money, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight), this funny, gutsy "fable" treats harsh truths with bitter irony. The grim comedy begins when orders from the Vatican send Fr. Cosgrove from his post in Africa to stamp out sin (i.e., illicit sex) in America. With his companion Great Big, a sometimes backsliding former cannibal, the priest arrives in New York City, where he learns about real sin. Through Baby Rock, a young black boy who befriends them, Cosgrove and Great Big become involved with the city's homeless and hungry, victims of "public assistance," and soon all hell breaks loose in Manhattan. There is hardly time to gasp between the swift developments, when the missionary and hungry Great Big declare war on all the exploiters of the have-nots: the pious rich types who pretend to help the poor, the bureaucratic flunkies who euchre welfare clients out of sustenance, even the Mafia. The dialogue is straight on and mean, the ethnic types funny and recognizable, with the feel of the city throbbing between the lines. This is Breslin at his bestpurely unbeatable. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In Vietnam, Owney Morrison was a hero, winner of the Medal of Honor. Back home in Queens, married and father of a baby daughter, Owney is following family tradition and working as a tunnel builder. He is also following the family tradition of heavy drinking, and he is losing the battle of the bottle. Desperate, his wife Dolores leaves him, determined to make her life more meaningful than the lot usually decreed for Queens housewives. This is more than simply another novel of marital problems. By focusing on the Morrisons and their extended families, their friends and neighbors, Breslin dramatizes the changing relationships of men and women, parents and children, in contemporary America. This is a serious book that is frequently very funny, filled with Breslin's trademark hilarious dialogue and his usual supporting cast of zany eccentrics. Easily Breslin's best novel. Literary Guild dual main selection. Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 435 pages
• Publisher: Ticknor & Fields (April 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899193129
• ISBN-13: 978-0899193120
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,985,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Great seller., January 30, 2010

By 

Kerri Stahl "ilovebooks" (Lawrenceville, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Table Money (Hardcover)

Excellent seller, rapid delivery. Very smooth transaction and would buy from this seller again!

3.0 out of 5 stars It isn't a bad book,, June 5, 2004

By 

James Hercules Sutton (Des Moines, IA (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Table Money (Hardcover)

but it isn't his best either, because it takes a hundred pages of anecdotes to get going & then nothing dramatic happens until p. 186. Unlike his other books, Breslin uses little dialogue and leans heavily on narrative, as if trying to put down everything he knows. He knows a great deal, about New York, about the Irish in New York, about why New York is New York. He doesn't much like what New York has become. The best of his book is how he makes a woman's struggle to control her destiny seem real. Maybe it was necessary for him to put this into historical context, but his story might have had more impact if he had omitted some of the history of one Irish family. Maybe he needed to warm up, He spent a long time on the book--"ten years to write," says the dust jacket. What we have here is a writer trying to straighten himself out as he learns his art. Worth reading as another illustratation of Oscar Wilde's saw, "The Irish are wonderful, except, of course, to each other." The whole history of Ireland lurks in that epithet & in everything Breslin writes.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Breslin, October 10, 2001

By 

A. Hogan (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Table Money (Paperback)

Jimmy Breslin is one of those writers with whom people invaiably get their politics intertwined. A staple in NYC for 4 decades, his columns have stuck a burr in the saddle of the powerful for many years{and Jimmy lets you know that, too, which contributes to his persona}In table money, he looks , in microcosm at the irish immigrant expierence in America through one family, at the horrific cost of alcoholism, and at one truly heroic woman. There are no easy, quick fixes in this novel. Owens decent into alcohol is not pleasant ,the descriptions of the sandhogs{tunnel diggers} is brilliant, and lower middle class life in Queens was absoltuely dead on. I think in many ways this book was a homage to Breslins late wife, who put up with his alcoholism for many years{his eulogy was one of the more moving things I have read in my life}. I believe firmly that Breslin is one of the simply great writers of our time, after you get pst the Damon Runyon bit, and trully, almsot spectacularly underrated because of his politics. An excellent, moving novel, though since it touches on so many things that are persoanl with me, I can indentify very strongly with the characters. Anyway, an excellent, superbly written novel for an american original.