Author: Walter Tevis

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicholson

First published:1959

Setting: Chicago, USA
Read in September 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.2

My Waterstones Review

“Debut novel from a great American post war author”

This must be one of the best books going that focuses on what it’s like to excel at a sport or game, how it requires character, it’s not just a game, more of an art form. But Walter Tevis achieves this again with – The Queen’s Gambit – this time the focus is Chess.

Nine ball, bank, straight pool, one-pocket are the hustler’s games. ‘Fast Eddie’ plays all types, but against Minnesota Fats his interest is straight, ‘I like the expensive kind.’ This is an excellent debut book, easy to read, a page turner. Written in 1959 it was turned into a movie two years later starring Paul Newman. Twenty-five years later Walter Tevis completest the story of ‘Fast Eddie’ with his sequel – The Color of Money.

Book Review

The rumour about ‘Fast Eddie’ Felsen taking the Texaco Kid, Varges, the man who invented one-pocket pool, and all-comers out West precedes him, but he will never take a top Chicago hustler like Minnesota Fats. ‘Fast Eddie’ is hustling his way across country with sidekick Charlie, accumulating a stake sufficient to take on the legend and he will soon arrive at Bennington’s pool hall.

Walter Tevis’s debut book was quickly made into a hit movie in 1961 starring Paul Newman, but it was the sequel which Tevis wrote 25 years later and published in 1984, ‘The Color of Money’ which won Paul an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. This was Walter Tevis’s last book as he died shortly afterwards from lung cancer.

At just over 200 pages this is a short book, but not short on quality. To be good at pool you need intelligence, confidence and the ability to concentrate, but it takes more to excel and to be the best, you need stamina, nerves of steel and you must read and face down your opponent and choose the right time to increase the stakes. This is an art form, when mastered pool is beautiful.

It takes more than a misspent youth to beat a person like Minnesota Fats. As ‘Fast Eddie’ discovers his character, so do we. He falls out with Charlie and in the early morning at a bus station coffee bar meets Sarah, a student of alcohol. But what Eddie needs is advice, a manager, a backer, perhaps a person like Bert a professional poker player, but Bert plays for high stakes, perhaps more than Eddie is willing to accept.