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The Ballad of a Small Player

Lawrence Osborne

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THE BALLARD OF A SMALL PLAYER, Lawrence Osborne

September 12, 2014 //

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Isbn 978-o-8041-3797-3; eBook Isbn 978-o-8041-3798-othe Ballad of a Small Player by Lawrence Osborne is a riveting account of risk and obsession in Macau’s casinos. I love Blogging for Books, and preview a book from them once or month. I saw the book’s cover, which I liked, and thought, what do I know about Macau?

The world I know of Macau is poles apart from the small player, Lord Doyle, protagonist in this novel lives to permeate his life with gambling, drinking and dalliances with the occasional lady of the night. He gambles and Macau’s casinos and baccarat tables pull him into winning and losing, and spiraling down into loss and addiction.

The anchor of Doyle’s current existence is a lot of money, alcohol and gambling and winning or losing. Doyle fled England to escape prosecution: absconding with funds. Perfect amount of money for immersion in gambling parlors, one shady one after another, where people are mere ghosts of personalities, showing facades, cracked selves intent only on winning, drinking, and hooking up with women. Osborne touches the marrow of addiction, and its slimy tunnels, and for a brief time in the novel it seems Doyle meets a prostitute who rescues him, likes him, even loves him. An interlude away from the rain slicked streets of Macau show an almost budding of a human spirit in Doyle, but true to his core, he returns to the tables.

The atmosphere is haunting and fugue like, yet written in very clear language. Lord Doyle is lost, and I don’t like reading about empty characters, but they exist and are very much a part of the fabric of life. I read this with some reluctance, but I admired the writing, the questions the book posed, the true portrayal of emptiness and angst of so many humans, and I will look up his other books. So insight is gained.

Thanks Blogging for Books