Customer Reviews

Tickets to the Devil

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tickets to the Devil was a fun read. The characters are likable, quirky, and remarkably easy to visualize. The story revolves around a contract bridge tournament, but you don't need to be a bridge player to appreciate it. I thouroughly enjoyed Powell's humor, and I'll never hear Danny Boy again without smiling.

I recently bought this to reread after 20 years, maybe because I've just resumed playing bridge regularly! Sure it's a little dated: the details of the bridge, the prices, and especially the sexual dynamics, but it's fun.

The late and brilliant essayist Sydney Harris properly took to task tournament bridge players who view the game as a psychological narcotic anesthetic against reality and those who view a bridge tournament as a venue to see who can be the nastiest to partner and opponents. This book, for which the author did commendably thorough and excellent research, amply demonstrates the validity of both of these highly correlated viewpoints. Remarkably, there isn't one diagram of a bridge hand in the book -- making its lesson, entertainment value, and suspense (all of which are very high) accessible to readers whether they play bridge or not. Locally, in a suburb not far from Detroit, and usually seven days a week, a microcosm of the nastiness at this not-so-fictional national tournament is re-enacted at a local bridge club (I was there ONCE).

ASIN B000BVCW1I - Quite possibly the only book I've ever read cover-to-cover and been able to say this about: I have no clue what the book was supposed to be about! As for genre, also no clue. Baffling, really.

A group of people descend on a Miami hotel for the Spring Nationals, an event of the ACBL (THE bridge organization). Many of them have histories with one another and all of them have their own reasons for being there. Ace McKinley's something of a has-been who'd like to make a comeback. Carola is his ex-wife, accompanied by her friend Babs, who obviously has a lesbian crush on Carola. Vicky is a young, boring girl easily reduced to tears who is there with Katy, who enjoys reducing people to tears. Vicky's real reason for being there is to see Ben again - they'd met in Boston and she developed a crush on him. When they meet again, Ben finds her irrelevant because he's concentrating on Sammy, his bridge partner since college. Sammy and Ben are tied for the lead in the race for the McKenney cup, awarded to the player who wins the most points in a year - and Ben's about to kick Sammy to the curb. Runa is the sex-kitten of the bunch, but underneath, she seems to hate men and enjoys emasculating them. Mary Rose is a ditzy widow who just enjoys the game, but can hardly afford to play. To save money, she picks up leftover food from other people's plates and totes it around in her purse.

The storyline is, despite this great potential batch of characters, boring. In fact, it almost doesn't exist. The group gathers, plays bridge, has some drama and departs. If you don't understand bridge, it's even worse, because there's a lot of detail about the game. Tops, bottoms, specific hands, etc. Enough to bore one right out of continuing reading. By page 197, still not certain what the heck the book was about, I'd decided to barrel through and see if I ever found out. I didn't and I'm not encouraging anyone else to try.

- AnnaLovesBooks

Very funny if you play contract bridge and are familiar with bridge personalities in the 1960s. I'm sure I missed a lot of the references. Otherwise the humor, suspense, and human interest will be lost.

A good book for a specialized audience. A great book for that group.