The Queen’s Gambit – Walter Tevis

I have never played chess, have only minimal knowledge of the game, and don’t have enough curiosity to want to learn more. However, I found The Queen’s Gambit, a book that centers its action and builds its tension around chess tournaments, absolutely riveting. Walter Tevis hooked me with his straight-forward prose, which tackles the chess world with authority, seldom pausing to explain or make concessions for the layperson. His passages of chess moves have less to do with the moves themselves and much more to do with the internal conflict faced by his protagonist, Elizabeth Harmon, whose entire identity is defined by the game.

Beth Harmon’s world is a small one. An orphan and loner, she has no family and very few friends. Her proclivity for chess is discovered in an accidental way when she is young, and afterward she has little time or interest for anything else, except for occasional bouts of alcohol and tranquilizer abuse when chess becomes too daunting. She has an addictive personality, and it is easy to imagine an alternative life in which her downward spiral is allowed to continue to a catastrophic end. But she has chess, and the need to win becomes her saving grace.

Chess, like any niche interest, has its own society, but it’s a society of which Beth never feels a true part. She is signaled out for being female, for being young, for being American. And she keeps her own distance, bred by her fierce competiveness and her distrust of the motivation of others. She plays her best, and seems to feel her most alive, when she is alone with the game, moving the pieces around in her head, her eyes closed to everything else around her.

Beth Harmon is thoughtfully created, and her story is one of the most compelling I've read in a while.