A Gambler's Anatomy

July 4, 2016
In this pleasantly bizarre novel from Lethem (Lucky Alan), a down-on-his-luck backgammon hustler returns to his hometown of Berkeley, Calif., to undergo experimental facial surgery. After a cold streak in Berlin, telepath Alexander Bruno learns of a potentially deadly tumor in his face. In Singapore, a chance encounter with a wealthy high school friend, Keith Stolarksy, who offers to foot Bruno’s medical bills, draws Bruno back to California, where a Hendrix-loving surgeon removes his tumor but permanently scars his once-handsome face. To pay his debt to Stolarksy, who’s paid all his bills, medical and otherwise, Bruno is forced to work in one of Stolarsky’s restaurants, serving sliders to faux-punk Berkleyans in a sack-like mask. This leads Bruno to a final rebellion against Stolarsky, which plays right into the benefactor’s hands. Though inventive and well crafted, the novel neither fully endears its characters to the reader nor establishes narrative momentum, playing at themes and romantic entanglements that are expertly introduced but often under-explored and discarded. The impression is of a strong poker hand played without aggression, the hunger of a player out to prove himself. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment.

Lethem's 10th novel is a romp in which history, both personal and collective, can't help but assert itself.Lethem's new novel tells the story of a backgammon hustler named Alexander Bruno who suffers from a pair of physical (or metaphysical) disorders: first, telepathy, or second sight, and then a membranous tumor beneath the surface of his face that does have the happy side effect of keeping his psychic abilities at bay. But when the tumor needs to be removed, Bruno encounters the key conundrum of this free-wheeling novel: that sometimes survival requires more than a bit of despair. Bruno discovers this when he returns to Berkeley, where he was raised, to confront the ghosts of his history, embodied in the figure of Keith Stolarsky, a childhood friend who, for his own reasons, decides to bankroll Bruno's surgery and recovery. "Why had Stolarsky wanted to save Bruno?" Lethem asks. "What was his life for?" The question cuts two ways. For Bruno, the issue is life or death but also more than that, because the life he has built--traveling alone and playing backgammon as a way of walling off not just his gift (such as it is), but indeed his very heritage--must be altered, drastically. "You asked me to save you," his surgeon reflects, "but to save you I had to destroy you. That is what I do." Stolarsky's motives are more elusive; a reclusive entrepreneur and hippie capitalist, he is, at heart, about control. As such, the novel turns, as it must, conspiratorial, although, as in most conspiracies, it is not always clear who is manipulating whom. Think Thomas Pynchon (whose books this one superficially resembles), especially in the scenes set in Berkeley, a landscape of hipster burger shops and lost souls still longing for a revolution that washed out in an undertow of drugs and dissolution decades before. That makes the novel a fitting follow-up to Dissident Gardens (2013), which traced a different (and not unrelated) set of radical breakdowns, those of New York in the 1950s and the communist left. Lest this sound weighty, it's not, so much: Lethem takes real pleasure in the language and writes with a sense of the absurd that illuminates his situations and his characters. "Telegraph Avenue," he writes, describing Berkeley's famous open-air market of countercultural chaos, "the island of lost toys." It's a vivid metaphor. In this tragicomic novel, nothing is ever exactly as it seems. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2016
Suave, sophisticated Alexander Bruno, a man of no fixed address, makes a good living gambling on high-stakes backgammon until his luck suddenly runs out. Penniless and suffering the effects of a huge tumor behind his face, he returns to the U.S. for radical surgery bankrolled by a high-school acquaintance who is now a hated capitalist despot in Bruno's hometown of Berkeley. But has the surgery destroyed his telepathic ability? Did he even have telepathy? His face laced with scars, a virtual prisoner of his benefactor, Bruno confronts his origins in the company of a motley crew of Berkeley radicals. Continuing in some ways the themes of Dissident Gardens (2013), Lethem combines an entertaining miniature of class struggle with a powerful exploration of the nature of self. But despite some wonderfully indelible supporting characters and a rendering of Berkeley you can practically smell, Bruno's own passivity dampens the fireworks until the well-worked finale. Lethem's focuswhether on backgammon, brain surgery, or anarchist burger chefsis exquisite, but the enigmatic vessel at the heart of this book won't capture everyone's imagination.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Lethem remains a big favorite among fiction readers, and buzz about his newest novel will spread quickly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 1, 2016

Alexander Bruno is an international high-roller out of a James Bond story, but when we meet him he is on a terrible losing streak with his normally flawless backgammon game. His innate ESP is failing him, a blot on his vision has recently appeared, and he has been getting badly intoxicated or distracted during games, finally ending up in an emergency room in Germany. The diagnosis is dire--he has a growth that's deemed inoperable--but he returns to his hometown of Berkeley, CA, for experimental surgery paid for by a long-lost wealthy friend, Keith Stolarsky. A lengthy section details the actual operation, and then begins Bruno's recovery, physical, mental, and psychological. He ends up hanging around in Berkeley with a bunch of wackos, recalling his misspent youth there, and getting hopelessly entangled in Stolarsky's nefarious business dealings and also with his benefactor's stunning girlfriend. VERDICT A humorously surreal and articulate story of Bruno's search for himself after having his face and brain rearranged, both by surgery and by modern life in general, this is, among other things, a great Berkeley novel like Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/16.]--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016

International backgammon hustler Bruno Alexander is down on his luck, perhaps owing to a blot distorting his vision. When a fainting spell lands him in the hospital, slick childhood buddy Keith offers to fly him to Berkeley for lifesaving experimental surgery. Alas, Berkeley has troubling associations for Bruno. Once more, National Book Critics Circle award winner Lethem makes the weird real, normal, and entertaining.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016

Alexander Bruno is an international high-roller out of a James Bond story, but when we meet him he is on a terrible losing streak with his normally flawless backgammon game. His innate ESP is failing him, a blot on his vision has recently appeared, and he has been getting badly intoxicated or distracted during games, finally ending up in an emergency room in Germany. The diagnosis is dire--he has a growth that's deemed inoperable--but he returns to his hometown of Berkeley, CA, for experimental surgery paid for by a long-lost wealthy friend, Keith Stolarsky. A lengthy section details the actual operation, and then begins Bruno's recovery, physical, mental, and psychological. He ends up hanging around in Berkeley with a bunch of wackos, recalling his misspent youth there, and getting hopelessly entangled in Stolarsky's nefarious business dealings and also with his benefactor's stunning girlfriend. VERDICT A humorously surreal and articulate story of Bruno's search for himself after having his face and brain rearranged, both by surgery and by modern life in general, this is, among other things, a great Berkeley novel like Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/16.]--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.