I enjoyed this story of life in a 19th century German spa town whose main attraction, besides the medicinal properties of the water, is the casino. There is a very good old Gregory Peck/Ava Gardner movie based on this story and that's what caused me to want to read the book. The movie did take liberties with the plot, as the original story does not have much of a plot; it's more like a detailed study of the characters and their lifestyle.
The narrator is a young man named Alexei Ivanovich who is working as a tutor in the family of a dissolute Russian general in reduced circumstances who is waiting for his elderly sick mother in Moscow to die so that he can inherit her wealth and marry a much younger gold digger he met at the casino. At first, Alexei is a detached observer of the goings-on in the casino, commenting on the various characters and even showing the general's mother how to play roulette when she unexpectedly recovers and turns up at the spa town, to everyone's disappointment. But despite his awareness of the addictiveness of gambling (after observing how others fall prey to it, including the general's mother), Alexei's love for the general's stepdaughter Polina and his attempts to help her get the money she needs leads him to become a compulsive gambler himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment