Swimming with Bridgeport Girls

Swimming with Bridgeport Girls
افزودن به بوکمارک اشتراک گذاری 0 دیدگاه کاربران 4 (1)

A Novel

مشارکت: عنوان و توضیح کوتاه هر کتاب را ترجمه کنید این ترجمه بعد از تایید با نام شما در سایت نمایش داده خواهد شد.
iran گزارش تخلف

فرمت کتاب

ebook

تاریخ انتشار

2017

نویسنده

Anthony Tambakis

ناشر

Simon & Schuster

شابک

9781451684926
  • اطلاعات
  • نقد و بررسی
  • دیدگاه کاربران
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نقد و بررسی

Publisher's Weekly

May 15, 2017
In his first novel, Tambakis stacks the deck against his gambling-addicted protagonist, Ray Parisi, a fired ESPN personality whose life is in free fall. As the story opens, he is still in love with his recently divorced wife, L, though she is dating another man; a bookie is after him for money; and he is wanted by the Connecticut state police for attacking a losing jockey. A windfall inheritance from his late, estranged father sends Ray off to Las Vegas in a quixotic scheme to raise a grubstake to purchase some property in Atlanta that has special meaning to his Southern-born ex. In Las Vegas, Ray romances the fickle Lady Luck, but it’s too late: L announces that she is going to marry her lover. So Ray flies off to Memphis, where he enlists some help in derailing her impending wedding (shenanigans include hopping the wall at Graceland). The author does an excellent job of recreating the noon-at-midnight feel of a Las Vegas booze-and-gambling binge. But Ray, as a character, remains problematic. He is a fine, witty companion in the early going, but after a while, this poster boy for arrested development becomes a bit of a bore. Late in the story, the meaning of the title becomes clear and supposedly offers insight into Ray’s actions. But it comes too late to revitalize this study of a flawed man’s wildly wrongheaded search for redemption.



Kirkus

May 1, 2017
Once a successful ESPN sportscaster, Ray Parisi is making a spectacular mess of his life.This debut novel by screenwriter Tambakis is loaded with Bruce Springsteen references: the hero is in love with a Jersey girl, and one of the Boss' most famous onstage speeches gets quoted in full. Deep into a gambling addiction, Ray has lost his job and wound up in a cheap Connecticut motel, and now the cops are after him because he assaulted a jockey who won a race after Ray had bet against him. He's never gotten over his ex-wife, identified only as L., who is now about to remarry. Ray gets a second shot when his estranged father dies and leaves him a $600,000 inheritance. But instead of turning his life around he heads to Vegas, where he plans to win a few jackpots, raise enough to buy a $2 million dream home, and convince L. to leave her fiance and join him there. His only ally on the trip is Renee, a teenage runaway he meets at a strip club, but even she's gone by the time Ray heads to Memphis to crash L.'s wedding. Tambakis keeps the humor from getting too broad and Ray from getting too sympathetic, though the reader usually roots for him anyway. His final confrontation with L. feels messy but true, just like a good Springsteen song. If this were a Springsteen album, it would be "Devils & Dust": partly set in Las Vegas, it evinces hope and humor but is dark and gritty at its core.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.



Library Journal

Starred review from June 1, 2017

Ray Parisi, divorced but still deeply in love with his ex-wife, is a former ESPN analyst-turned-gambling addict who owes his bookie $52K and is on the run for attacking a jockey on the track after the guy cost him a $90,000 payday by easing up at the wire. Ray tries to see himself as a man nobly facing adversity, but the reality of his self-destruction makes that difficult. When he inherits $602,500 from his father, Ray heads to Las Vegas, convinced he can increase the pot to two million and use the earnings to win back his spouse by buying a property they both love. Using jocularity to mask his more troubling traits, Ray addresses himself and the reader throughout, creating sympathy for his plight despite the reader often wanting to whack him upside the head. Blindly self-aware, blithely stupid-smart, Ray believes that hope is everything in life. VERDICT Tambakis's outstanding debut is entertaining and sometimes sad, a superb portrait of a troubled but wisecracking gambler. Think Carl Hiaasen meets Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Gambler.--Ron Terpening, formerly of Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.




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