The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

The Ballad of a Small Player

March 31, 2014

The Ballad of a Small Player by Lawrence Osborne
Published by Hogarth
Publication date: April 3rd 2014
three-stars

ballad of a small player

Lawrence Osborne is a travel journalist in addition to writing fiction, which may be why I read his novels so slowly. His words describe far-off places in a way that makes them appear before my eyes. His novel The Forgiven was one of my favorites in 2012 and now he is back with his latest, The Ballad of a Small Player. Whereas Forgiven took place in the hot, desolate landscape of Morocco, Player is set in the moist, lush world of Macau’s casinos and the islands around Hong Kong.

It was after eleven and the night shift was just in. Brutal, cynical men with red faces and cheap suits, smoking continuously, their eyes lusty little slits that sucked everything in and spat it out again. 

It is the story of ‘Lord’ Doyle, a British ex-pat who finds himself in Macau in a shady form of early retirement—namely absconding with an elderly woman’s life savings. He lives in a hotel and haunts the casinos at night, taking resigned pleasure in being drunk and known as the gwai lo (ghost person aka white) who doesn’t care if he wins or loses. He meets and spends the night with a young woman named Dao-Ming who later rescues him in the Intercontinental Hotel where he is about to default on an enormous restaurant tab. By this point he has lost everything so she takes him to her apartment on a small island and nurses him back to health. He repays her kindness by stealing all her earnings as an escort and heads back to the casinos where he embarks on an unbelievable winning streak.

Ballad of a Small Player reads like a waking dream, where it is impossible to tell night from day and hours pass in minutes. The plot moves at a pace that is both frenetic (as bets are placed and thousands of dollars lost and won in minutes) and languorous (the time spent with Dao-Ming).  Osborne entwines the ghost stories and superstitions of the Chinese throughout the novel, focusing, in particular, on the hungry ghost—a spiritual being with a “mouth the size of a needle eye and stomachs the size of caves. These are humans who were overcome by their desires and never satisfied, often dying as the victim of suicide or a violent death. As the novel progresses and Doyle’s appetites are not assuaged with massive quantities of alcohol and ever larger quantities of food, we begin to wonder if he is not already lost to this world and a hungry ghost himself.

Scallops made no dent in me, nor did orange duck. For that matter, I was starving for the next two days, even though I ate non-stop. 

This is not so much a story, although it clearly has one, as a descriptive tour de force of the lurid environment within the casinos and the harsh but delicate beauty of the nature that surrounds them. Osborne uses language like few other authors, writing of the “sweet rancid sponginess” of a casino’s carpets and describing both the action in the casinos and the food sold in small local restaurants with such taut precision that it is a visual experience. The ending, when it comes, is surprising and yet, feels inevitable. We are not certain what is real within these neon palaces of greed and opulence and what is merely a façade for the desperate lives being gambled away.

three-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 3 Star Books
  • By Lawrence Osborne
age
Age of Desire
senses
Coming to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bride
Tomorrow there will be apricots
Tomorrow There will be Apricots
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
What’s Mine and Yours
memphis
Memphis: A Novel by Tara Stringfellow
rules of civility
Rules of Civility
heir
The Heir Affair: A Novel
London
With Love From London: A Novel
woke up lonely
Woke Up Lonely: A Novel
collector
The Collector’s Apprentice: A Novel
Portlandia: A Guide for Visitors
Sergio Y.
perfect little world
Perfect Little World: A Novel
peach
Peach Blossom Spring
October
October Reading
beautiful
Beautiful Animals: A Novel
forgiven
The Forgiven
Hunters in the Dark

Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, cultural, gambling, Knopf, Southeast Asia

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Bloglovin
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Indiebound and Amazon. If you click on a link that takes you to any of these sites and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2023

Copyright © 2023 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in