Book description
The Risk Pool is a thirty-year journey through the lives of Sam Hall, a small-town gambling hellraiser, and his watchful, introspective son Ned. When Ned's mother Jenny suffers a breakdown and retreats from her husband's carelessness into a dream world, Ned becomes part of his father's seedy nocturnal world, touring…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Risk Pool as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The Risk Pool shows the importance of accepting and loving our fathers for who they are instead of resenting them for who they never could be. Sam Hall, the irresponsible wreck of a dad in this warm-hearted and funny book, is by any definition a terrible father, yet his relationship with his son Ned feels real in ways that most fictionalized father-son relationships don’t. Forced to care for Ned when Ned’s mother is hospitalized with mental illness, Sam introduces his son to pool halls, bars, bookies, drunks, and the occasional petty crime. Though aware of his father’s many faults, Ned…
From Chuck's list on fathers and sons.
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Six months ago, Tom Halliday left his job. Two days after that, his wife left him. Now, with his mother seriously ill, he is forced to return to his childhood home and rejoin the family he has worked to avoid for the past twenty years.
As the weeks pass and…
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