The Queen's Gambit Kindle Edition

Of course I came to *Queen's Gambit* the novel after watching the Netflix miniseries, which I really enjoyed, but what really made me read the book was an article by Sarah Miller in The New Yorker in which she really praises it as her "platonic ideal of a novel" (Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient is said to re-read it "for the pure pleasure and skill of it.") To my surprise, I found in QG a formidable book that quietly but decidedly seized me the same way a chess grandmaster would besiege the king from her opponent. And it did so not with pomp and circumstance or bold stylistic outbursts but because of its carefully crafted frugality and simplicity. That came to me almost as an irony, because I had then just finished a sequence of books by Ian McEwan (Atonement, Nutshell, and then Amsterdam) and there couldn't have been a greater contrast than McEwan's nearly self-indulgent digressive style (however enjoyable it may be) and Tevis's frugal, self-controlled and self-contained moderation. Still, Tevis's simple, sharp and sometimes short sentences carry great power I've learned to admire, and that is maybe what Miller and Ondaatje were talking about. I was really surprised by how the novel was copy-pasted almost word by word to the screen. There is very little 'adaptation' as much as sheer 'transcription'. The great dialogs of the novel are reproduced verbatim in the miniseries, which speaks a lot about how good Tevis's text is. But I agree with those who believe something is lost in this translation. For one, Sarah Miller in The New Yorker says Anya Taylor-Joy is just too pretty to play ugly-duckling Beth Harmon, and that simple fact almost subliminally leads to her being portrayed as a much more self-confident character than she is in the book. That is true, but I think it is still not it.Tevis excels in something that is very subtle and silent: he has the ability to carefully control the tone of the text, especially in scenes of intense emotion, disorientation, or even tragedy. That does not mean he just moves away into a cold, distant narration (Camus' The Stranger) or that he purposefully ignores the tension and waters the text down, because the tension is still there all the time (and the last chapters with the games with Luchenko and Borgov are like magnets, I couldn't stop reading them), but it comes pure, almost primitive, certainly non-judgmental (which contrasts with Tevis's advocating, almost preaching style in the previously written sci-fi Mockingbird.) Here, Tevis lets us enter Beth's mind and think with her with no prejudice. We move with her and witness her victories and failures just as if objectively watching her move the pieces in her chess board. Someone has said that Tevis in The Hustler is like Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon. The way Tevis deals with Beth's problems with liquor, strangely enough, made me think of Hemingway's describing (in a underplayed, almost tender way) the misfortunes of Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea.And that is exactly where I think the miniseries misses the point. The few changes made in the screen adaptation were all towards 'raising the tone', making it more intense and sentimental (sometimes even corny), or alternatively to provoke awe or shock. There is none of that in the book. And those minor changes end up making a big difference in how we even judge Beth's gift as a chess player.A friend of mine commented that the miniseries does not make it crystal clear whether Beth is a truly talented chess player or can only play well because of the hallucinations she gets by ingesting large amounts of green pills. Maybe the intention was to add more drama to Beth's chemical dependence, but that is not really the case in the novel (there, it is clear that Beth wants to remain 'clean' because that worsens her performance, which seems to come as a very personal, autobiographical trace of Tevis's himself.) But the important point is: she is an extraordinary chess player, period.This is quite important, because by putting her chess talent into question, the miniseries tones down Beth's own command as a character. Indeed, although Beth is more fragile and less confident in the book than in the miniseries, she has way much more control over her own destiny in the novel (she does get help from friends but that help comes in subtly different ways): when deciding to learn more about chess, when dealing with and escaping her addictions, even at her final game with Borgov. The simple fact that in the book people don't drop in front of Beth's house out of the blue (which annoyingly happens all the time in the miniseries) is in itself full of meaning. All that makes QG, the novel written in 1983, a much sharper and more radical statement about the power of women than QG, the miniseries produced 37 years later, which makes Tevis's work even more relevant and remarkable.

Having never played chess, you wouldn't think I would have even liked this story. But with all the monumental obstacles she faced in her life, Beth is amazing at not only recognizing her own pitfalls and shortcomings, but facing and overcoming them with much courage, unexpected wisdom and a beautifully depicted strength.Having watched the series several times and read the book twice, I feel so very proud of this amazing young woman!

I fell in love with the show and wanted to know if the book was as great and it's even better

I came to this book after watching and enjoying (twice) the recent miniseries version of The Queen's Gambit. I am sure that there are many who have done the same thing, curious to see how the book might differ from the excellent Netflix production. I also was hoping to find enough new and different in the book to hold my interest, and to enhance my enjoyment of a story that I already knew.It is remarkable to see how this story, written by Walter Tevis and first published in 1983 - nearly 40 years ago! - has emerged from obscurity to become a phenomenon. It is a timeless story of a young woman, Beth Harmon, who succeeds in a field previously (and still) dominated by men. It is also the tragic story of a lonely girl who is blessed with an extraordinary ability almost certainly inherited from her mother, who was a PhD in Mathematics before her tragic death, which led to Beth's being sent to an orphanage at the age of 9. She develops an interest in chess and is given her early instruction in the game by the custodian at the Methuen Home for Girls. The story traces her career from a young chess prodigy, who wins the first tournament that she enters, through to the conclusion of her dramatic trip to Soviet Russia and match against the Russian Grandmaster Vasily Borgov.Reflecting on the Netflix miniseries, I think that a great deal of its success is due to the decision to produce the story as a 7 episode miniseries, thereby providing roughly 7 hours total to tell the story in a way that fully captures the Tevis book. The remarkable Anya Taylor-Joy, who portrays Beth Harmon in the miniseries, is also superb.And how does the book compare to the miniseries? From the beginning and through about the two-thirds point in the book they are almost identical, to the point that many of the spoken lines from the miniseries are taken directly from the book. At that two-thirds point, there begin to emerge some differences, with a couple of story elements either omitted from the miniseries, or changed to fit the dramatic objectives of the modern producer. I did not feel that any of the changes made for the miniseries were poor decisions, but neither do I conclude that the book is superior.In the end they are both telling the same story, with differences in detail that don't necessarily favor one over the other. For those who have seen the miniseries, the book will not add a lot to that experience. Those who read the book first may have a different feeling, one that I'm not in a position to represent.Either way, this is a fine story. I'm now inclined to explore the works of Walter Tevis further! My reading list: The Hustler  First published in 1959, made into a feature film in 1961 starring Paul Newman The Man Who Fell to Earth  First published in 1963, also a feature film and television series Mockingbird  First published in 1980 Far From Home  Short story collection first published in 1981 The Steps of the Sun  First published in 1983 The Queen's Gambit  First published in 1983 (book reviewed here) The Color of Money  First published in 1984, sequel to The Hustler, made into a feature film in 1986 starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise

Meticulously written, not a word too much, mostly just describing what happens, not falling into the trap of familiar tropes, The Queen’s Gambit is such a tender and warm and generous book. Beth Harmon is not playing chess against grandmasters, she’s playing against herself. And isn’t that what we all are doing?

英語のレベルはそこまで難しくないです。比較的平易で、古英語的な表現や単語が無くて読みやすい。字が思ったより小さかったので、ｋｉｎｄｌｅで買った方が良かったかも・・・

The detail of the chess games draws you in to Beth’s world, into her mind, and explores the troubles she faces - a great talent, well described.

The book is much more interesting than the mini-series, it is sad that Amazon mentions it in the title by the way (The Queen's Gambit: Now a Major Netflix Drama), since- it makes the title awkward to see on the Kindle,- the book predates the series and not the other way round,- the title looks like an ad of very bad taste.But the mention of the Netflix series begs for a comparison.The book conveys Beth's internal conflict with more depth, which was to be expected from a book, but I also think the series was over-edulcorated for the wider audience. The beginning of the series mostly matches the story, at the exception of a few unnecessary additions and a few mistakes. But an entire section describing Beth's struggle with addiction and picking herself up after a defeat is mostly absent from the series. The reason behind this defeat is important because its nature is the cause of this descent to Hell; in the series it's been completely changed to a random fact invented by the film maker to attract more viewers.The series isn't bad, but puts suggestive sex and fantasy where the book deals with deeper psychological issues.The book is easy to read, though. There is a good share of descriptive and introversion, but the style is direct and punctuated with a lot of "action", and a lot of chess of course. The author went into a lot of trouble describing the strategy and tactics of the games, and what a good player perceives during those games, which could be most interesting for non-players because it gives them a chance to understand people who play it - and why they love that game.For that reason, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to non-players; they just need to be aware that this is a pure fictional character (and not inspired by Bobby Fischer or other celebrities, contrary to what some have claimed), and that most real players have a balanced life and don't go through those conflicts.To the question "Should I read the book if I have seen the series?" I would definitely answer "Yes!"I would have liked to see diagrams of some of the games, actually, I'm sure the author had them, but it's not always possible to reconstruct the positions from the description (or at least it's too high-level for me).

Beautifully written, the book hooks you from the start. Even though I'm not good at chess and couldn't understand the technicalities, I appreciated the precision Tevis deployed in getting me involved in the games. The protagonist is wonderfully sketched, in her loneliness, tenacity, vulnerability. She's an unloved orphan girl who seeks for love in the only way she knows