I had two hesitations about the book.
(1) The
review raises a lot of interesting topics, but it was hard for me to decide to what depth the
book deals with those topics. If they only get a casual mention in the book, then I don't need the book, because I already saw the casual mentions in the review!
(2) It's hard for me to believe that the author was
sincere in his dedication to the game. One or two years is a trivial amount of time to "devote" oneself to any worthwhile endeavor. (People on chesspub have devoted decades to the game, most without any pretence of "going pro".) From the review, all I can detect is a kind of box-ticking exercise. So the first suspicion is that the whole thing was just material for the book, which is a fine topic, but if the author was not
sincere then I think it should have been done as journalism instead of memoir. Also I don't understand the review's footnote about feature writing. Why
wouldn't this be in the book? After all, the features were about chess, and this is one of the basic ways that pros have always paid the rent. My guess is that it would have undermined the "obsession" angle.
From the review:
Quote:Stranger still is the decision Chapin makes to travel to Hyderabad, ...
The unkind part of me wonders whether the author had an assignment to cover the tournament.
Edited: change pretense to pretence -- I forgot where chesspub is hosted!