The Hustler by Walter Tevis Review

“Fast” Eddie Felson, a brilliant young pool hustler, travels from California to Chicago to take on the best player in the country: Minnesota Fats. Will the young up and comer beat the old pro? Of course - there’s no story otherwise! 

And that’s about my only criticism of Walter Tevis’ The Hustler: the predictability of the story. I’ve been trying to pin down why I didn’t outright love this book like The Queen’s Gambit and I think that’s the only aspect of it that sticks in my brain craw: you can see the narrative structure too nakedly and Tevis doesn’t throw any curveballs to make you sit up and pay attention. 

Eddie metaphorically falls, then we gotta wait for him to recover and finally defeat the dude at the end. And Tevis’ writing style doesn’t lend itself to simply blitzing the chapters, though that’s not a criticism in itself - he writes beautifully - just that getting through particularly that middle part made it easy for me to put the book down. I’m realising more and more that the most important part of fiction is how a story’s told rather than the content of the story itself - but that doesn’t mean the story isn’t important either. 

Otherwise, I loved The Hustler - Walter Tevis does it again! Tevis worked briefly in a pool hall and he really captures the atmosphere of those places where he must’ve seen real life Eddie Felsons come through and hustle the locals. The scenes where Eddie’s playing pool are genuinely gripping - like in The Queen’s Gambit, even though I couldn’t mentally picture what was happening, I got a good sense of what the characters were experiencing to understand the meaning of the scene. 

And, while the story arc is familiar and unoriginal, I enjoyed seeing Eddie get back on his feet and build up towards the rematch with Fats. His learning what it takes to beat someone higher up than him in his profession is actually quite inspiring - in a sense, the novel works indirectly as a fictional self-help manual, urging you to dig deep to find the strength and confidence to keep pushing forwards, overcome obstacles, etc.! 

The characters are great - Tevis never lets you know them too well so their behaviour can surprise you. That works especially well with Eddie and Sarah’s romance, which was moving and convincing for being realistic and very undramatic, and Bert, Eddie’s manager, with that scene at the end. 

It’s amazing that The Hustler is Tevis’ first novel because it’s so well-written and displays such confident storytelling - what a talented writer he was! It’s not as flawless as The Queen’s Gambit but it is another excellent Walter Tevis novel - and I can’t wait to read the sequel, The Color of Money!