cover image The Bookie's Son

The Bookie's Son

Andrew Goldstein. Sixoneseven Books (www.sixonesevenbooks.com), $14 trade paper (300p) ISBN 978-0-9848245-0-2

Drawing from his own life, Goldstein's powerful debut follows the retrospective misadventures of 12-year-old Ricky Davis, the "thin, anemic" son of Pearl, an aging Bronx beauty who once dreamed of silver screen stardom, and Harry, a garment worker with a pernicious gambling habit. When Harry falls into debt with mobster Nathan Glucksman, he is conscripted as a goon with Ricky in tow. Befitting a Bronx-born Jew of the '60s, the son is no na%C3%AFf: when Harry goes into hiding, Ricky assumes the role of full-time bookie, hoping to save his family. Meanwhile, Pearl%E2%80%94who works reading movie scripts%E2%80%94formulates a plan to rip off Elizabeth Taylor, one of her boss's clients. In addition to filling his father's shoes, Ricky must navigate the battlefields of adolescence%E2%80%94rife with wayward libido, pervasive dysfunction, frank racism, and an everyday desperation of the kind that prompts a mother to suggest casually to her pregnant daughter: "Let's go shoplift some clothes at Alexander's." Part urban YA Bildungsroman, part Portnoy's Complaint, this is not the subtlest of stories, but neither was the Bronx the subtlest of neighborhoods. (May)