Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book has been on my shelf for about 30 years. I bought it originally because I had met the author shortly before his death. I was working as a patient escort in the hospital where he was receiving treatment. He was well-mannered, but terribly bitter, which I suppose is understandable if one knows he’s dying of cancer. I had put off reading the book because I was afraid it would be a bitter book. Nothing could be more wrong. This is a book that is doggedly upbeat. Beth Harmon is a plain and unloved child who is put in an orphanage after her mother is killed in an auto accident. She lives a lonely life with only two friends. One is a tall black girl who is also unloved; the other is a secret friendship with the orphanage’s old janitor, who teaches her the game of chess. Chess is a life-saving and inspirational experience for her that she becomes obsessed with. She is a true prodigy with a natural gift for the game. It’s chess that gives her the only real joy in her life. But she also needs love and emotional support from other humans. In childhood, she begins using tranquilizers that were distributed free in the orphanage at first, until it was declared that they were unsafe. When they become unavailable she begins stealing them. She occasionally seals money, too. In her mid-teens her adoptive mother gives her a beer, which she takes to like a duck to water. Beth is a very believable character. I’m surprised that a male author could write such a convincing adolescent girl. The novel follows her chess career from playing with the janitor in the school basement to the major world tournament against the world’s top player, a Russian grand master, at the height of the Cold War. Can she beat him? Or will she fall prey to her addictions, as she has several times before? This is an extremely suspenseful drama that I had difficulty putting down. For sheer entertainment, I don’t think I’ve read anything that can beat it in at least ten years. And I know next to nothing about chess. This is book is beautiful and compassionate, as well as suspenseful. Five stars.