Twelve Grand Book

I'll get straight to the point: you probably have to be a gambler to really enjoy reading this. The book is all about indulgence, mainly on the betting front, although sex, booze and drugs are also high up on the inebriated agenda. The other caveats (do you need any more?) are that swearing and blasphemy feature regularly. But the most frustrating aspect of the book is that the author sometimes uses abbreviations for common words. It is not always obvious what he means, although you get the general gist. The main character is clearly in a state of (alcoholic) decline as he relates what he does with the £12,000 given him by a publishing company (coincidentally, Yellow Free Press, the book's publishers) to fritter away on gambling. He ends up waging a "silent war" against a lot of things in his life, some of them imaginary; a state of mind induced by his almost-perpetual intoxicated condition? Despite its obvious faults, it is a clever and sometimes humorous book that gets you thinking. It neatly alternates between the past and present, until the twain inevitably meet, and it is an interesting read on the whole, as long as you do not mind the bad language, etc. You (eventually) end up feeling sorry for the writer and applaud his raw honesty, although you sometimes feel intoxicated yourself reading the book, particularly the fuzzy ending.Read More