The Gambler

This haunting novel, the second of a trilogy, which began with The Dancer, is set for the most part in Dublin between the wars. Christine Dwyer Hickey paints a disturbingly accurate picture of a family's slow decline. The shadowy figure of the dancer reappears while his son, the gambler of the title, struggles through to early manhood.

The nerve ends of the city and its inhabitants are exposed with breadth and vigour and with psychological acuity. At once disquieting and deeply resonant, the desperate plight of her characters creates a vivid sense of time and place, where the tortuous forces of life are brought down to bear on this Dublin family. In The Gambler a powerful creative imagination is at work.

Praise for Dwyer Hickey:

'Some of the finest writing of this century and the last' Irish Independent

'The intricacies of class are brilliantly observed through the eyes of a distressed child. [The] achievement is the creation of Tatty's voice, a voice that guides the reader through this world from the child's limited perspective ... Dwyer Hickey successfully juxtaposes the ordinary and the extraordinary' The Irish Times