The Favourite Game Book

The Favourite Game opens with the line, "Breavman knows a girl named Shell whose ears were pierced so she could wear the long filigree earrings." Like Suzanne in the Leonard Cohen song, Shell has touched a young man's body with her mind, but she wants to stake a claim to more than his flesh. Breavman is creating a Song of Songs to her glory superimposed on a lament over his inability to renounce his Jewish soul to her gentile body. The novel is steeped in biblical consciousness. Breavman is simultaneously a priest in Babylonian exile mourning the loss of King Solomon's glories and King David revelling carnally in the delights of a multitude of women, including this beguiling foreigner. Alternately depressed about the past that perished with his father's death and manic about all the young women he wants to bed, Breavman's story brims with the delightful incongruities and twisted harmonies of American Beauty. Like Lester in Mendes's movie, Breavman strives for distance from himself but can't help constantly imploding. He is both a self-mocking hero and a self-inflated villain in a story that has many orgasms but no climax. The effect is nearly as cinematic as American Beauty.Read More