This book showed some signs of being intriguing at the beginning, and never followed through. Lethem still sets scenes well and puts words together in a satisfying way. But I just never felt like this one ended up going much of anywhere.

This book didn't really manage to hold my attention, and at times I found it downright irritating (e.g. is his treatment of every female character meant to be ironic? If so I don't think he carries it off, and if not... yikes). Although I loved Motherless Brooklyn, I couldn't really get through Fortress of Solitude either... it's possible I'm just not much of a Lethem fan after all.

full review and puppy love here: http://www.shelfstalker.net/blog/a-gamblers-anatomy-jonathan-lethem

While backgammoning abroad in Singapore, Alexander Bruno meets an old childhood friend, Stolarsky, who has mysteriously become a real estate mogul in their hometown of Berkeley.

After their encounter, things go awry for Alexander in Berlin, when he passes out during a game with a client. He wakes up in the hospital and his situation is serious. The “blot” that has been growing to occlude his vision is actually a tumor behind his nose and eyes and it is inoperable, at least for the German doctors.

Blot is used as an interesting double entendre, as this is also a backgammon term for a checker left alone on a point and therefore vulnerable to being hit.

But there is a guy, a crazy hippy doctor in California (of all places), who specializes in such tumor removal. Perhaps Alexander could return stateside? Penniless, he has no one to call except Stolarsky, who promptly books him a ticket home.

From the beginning, an anti-hero like Alexander is, of course, destined to return to his hometown to confront the reason why he left there, his old friend (however indirectly), his general issues with social life, himself, and of course, his tumor. He should probably get that looked at.

In true Lethem fashion, all that is not really what this book is about, though. Which is not to say that it isn’t important, or that it doesn’t play in metaphorically, thematically, or otherwise.

In backgammon, the board always starts out with the same placement, but the checkers can end up in wildly different positions all depending on the roll of the dice. It’s random chance, but it’s also how you decide to use your chance. What moves are available to you on the board and what strategy you are using. And one single roll can alter the luck of the entire board!

Really, it’s all a big metaphor for life and in this book, Alexander’s life has just turned into one losing game of backgammon after another.

overall unsure of what this book was about

What a weird book. It took me a long time to finish, and I really did not enjoy it.

Le pongo tres estrellas porque no sé muy bien si me ha gustado o es una caca. Ha habido ratos que me han interesado muchísimo los personajes y lo que pasa, otros tramos de la historia parece todo un despropósito en el que no entiendes cómo el argumento cambia tanto y cambia así... Creo que hay personajes muy malgastados y con poca exploración de lo que es el aspecto del jugador, para acabar desembocando en una especie de libro de terror claustrofóbico. Todo muy marciano, la verdad.

An international backgammon hustler with a benign tumor in his brain bumps into a high school acquaintance at a club in Singapore. So where the hell is that going to go. I had no idea, but enjoyed the ride.

This book is going to be published again with the title "The blot", but I cannot really understand why as it is far from being one of the best books written by Lethem, to be precise I read it because I had to, but I would never read it again. The characters are superficial and it was impossible for me to understand half of the reason why they did something, the other half reason I disagreed with. Only thing that this book left me is the desire to learn Backgammon.

Non capisco il perché, ma tra un paio di settimane questo libro verrá ripubblicato con il titolo "The blot", pur non essendo il migliore tra i libri di Lethem, anzi; per quanto mi riguarda io dovevo leggerlo, ma non lo rifarei mai. I personaggi mi sono sembrati piuttosto superficiali ed é stato impossibile per me capire, almeno la metá delle volte, perché facevano delle cose, quando lo capivo invece, di solito non ero d'accordo. L'unica cosa che mi ha lasciato questo libro, é il desiderio di imparare a giocare a Backgammon.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!