Tsipi Keller

Thoroughly entertaining, whether read as straightforward account of the disintegration of a life or as black comedy. It's to Keller's credit that a reader could take it for either.

Maggie accepts her friend Robin's invitation to accompany her on a holiday to a Caribbean island. Once there, Robin goes her own way and Maggie goes to hell in a handbasket. The tale is told in a 1st-person once-removed style inasmuch as the narration is 3rd-person but the reader sees things from Maggie's perspective only. This leads to some nice ambiguity: Robin might for example be in her self-centred way oblivious or downright nefarious or at bottom a protective friend.. And there are glimpses, like those offered by unreliable narrators, of the protagonist's being something other than she seems. A reader might think Maggie simply lost and pitiable but there are hints that she might instead be quite unpleasant--condescending, bitter, and clinging.

Keller is sometimes a bit heavy-handed, events occasionally seem contrived, and Maggie's decline is implausibly precipitous but the writing is smooth enough and even minor characters are more than figures painted on a backdrop. Jackpot is like a less one-dimensional version of, the likes of Jenn Ashworth's A Kind of Intimacy: a well-written, absorbing, undemanding story of a blinkered woman's unravelling that whilst not a literary work is too intelligent and too striking to be a mere beach read.… (meer)

This is a nicely written novel of ideas. Marcus Weiss is a man in love with books and the ideas to be found within them. Now in middle age, in his (at least) second career and (definitely) second marriage. He is working on both a novel and a dictionary of, as he calls it, “The Human Gesture in Western Literature.” Weiss identifies strongly with the characters in his book, but also cares deeply about his wife and his sometimes tempestuous marriage, and with his small circle of friends. There's not much plot here. Mostly the book is a reverie about the writing life, and about the power of ideas, and of friendship, to inspire. It's also, on the side, as it were, a love letter to New York City. Eventually, I have to say, the writing and the ideas presented became repetitive for me, and I can't really say there's much new ground broken. Nevertheless, if this sort of narrative is your cup of tea, I would consider Prophet a novel worth exploring.… (meer)