All or Nothing
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A "funny, relentless, haunting, and highly readable" novel about one man's desperate gambling addiction (ForeWord Magazine).
P is a school bus driver in Florida, and six month ago he won a hundred grand at the casino. What his wife and family don't realize is that the money is long gone. To keep them fooled—and feed his ongoing compulsion—he indulges in bigger and bigger bets, scrounging for cash anywhere he can. Finally, faced with the ultimate financial crisis, he hits it really big. Yet winning, he soon learns, is just the beginning of a deeper problem . . .
"Allen takes his place on a continuum that begins, perhaps, with Dostoyevsky's Gambler, courses through Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, William S. Burroughs's Junky, [and] the collected works of Charles Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr. . . . colorfully evokes the gambling milieu." —The New York Times Book Review
"This is strongly recommended and deserves a wide audience; an excellent choice for book discussion groups." —Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Allen's dark and insightful novel depicts narrator P's sobering descent into his gambling addiction. P, a Miami native, is a school bus driver and desperate gambler who spends his nights (and many of his days) in south Florida casinos. Both a surprisingly likable and an often despicable character, P is a perpetual loser with a $1,000-a-day habit who lies to his wife and scrounges in the seats of his bus looking for loose change the kids left behind. He takes the small amounts of cash that his destitute, dying mother offers him to support his obsession. P knows he's sick, but he doesn't want any help; he lusts for the next big score. Finally, his luck begins to change, transforming him from a broke degenerate into a legendary professional gambler in a signature black cowboy hat. The well-written novel takes the reader on a chaotic ride as P chases, finds and loses fast, easy money. Allen (Churchboysand Other Sinners) reveals how addiction annihilates its victims and shows that winning isn't always so different from losing.
