Walter Tevis

Review

I have been waiting to buy "The Queen's Gambit" for quite a long time, two years to be precise. In the beginning of 2022, I first read my first Tevis novel "The Man Who Fell to Earth". The sci-fi was captivating and I had no hesitation to pick up "The Hustler". The first read was all love, and the second hundred times that love. Around that time, I was writing my first-ever fantasy novel and it required the fifteen-year nerd to seduce the girl he fell in love with. Proud of his intelligence, he mocks her lack of appetite for substantial turns of life and when she confessed her interest in chess, he took it on himself to teach her how to play proper chess. The girl plays along and loses a series of games to him until somebody smacks the arrogance of the boy that in his business and buried with books, he had missed the current events around his life and failed to register that she was a child prodigy at chess and runner up at national chess championship. That writing has been on the back burner and yet I can afford to give away another spoiler from the novel. The title of one chapter from the fantasy world was "The Bride of a One-sided Marriage". It was too good to remain restricted to a chapter title and I ended up writing a full novel with the same title. Kalamos released that novel on 15 December 2023. Since that time, I intended to read Tevis's masterpiece. Sigh! 


What can I say about this absolute masterpiece? If "The Hustler" was a piece of genius, this one is out of the universe. For any chess-lover, this is a classic and nobody from this audience should miss it. If you have lost your appetite for chess, or you are looking to rejuvenate your interest in this game, the remedy is quite simple. Read "The Queen's Gambit". Never did I imagine that one can write poetry of chess moves. Tevis does the same without writing poems and that's his brilliance. What this novel does is that it goes beyond rejuvenation. It is not difficult to see how Tevis put together this classic. The intricacies of the game are not possible to be captured by an amateur. Tevis took to playing chess seriously and he did that and proved it by "... and had built his chess rating up from 1166 to 1421...". He also seems to have added a bit of Tevis in the protagonist Beth, especially his addiction to her. But he did naturally by putting her in Metheun and her dependency on the green pills. The way Beth's growth in chess sprouts and the pills are laced with it makes an explosive start. The character of Shibel is at another level and when he returns at the end, not exactly a return, you feel so sorry for him. That's how the bond with the characters grows as you transgress the novel. 


The beauty of the novel is the smashing dare of combining theory and the play. When you read the novel, and it's fine if you don't get the notations or can't imagine the game being played with closed eyes, and the dry description of chess begins, it seems essential and not dry. Seldom can authors combine the two that well, and with such a perfect mixture. In many ways, it is artistic, chess magic woven, and it automatically increases your passion, wherever you want to put it into action. Where I had an agenda to help my writing by imbibing prose chess, I am now inclined to play the game more than worry about returning to the fantasy project. This is Tevis work at his best. 


As a parting shot, I will give here partial list of chess books I came across in the novel: 


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