Synopses & Reviews
Bobby Clark is just sixteen when he drops out of school to follow his big brother, Jim, into the jewelry business. Bobby idolizes Jim and is in awe of Jims girlfriend, Lisa, the best saleswoman at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. What follows is the story of a young mans education in two of the oldest human passions, love and money. Through a dark, sharp lens, Clancy Martin captures the luxury business in all its exquisite vulgarity and outrageous fraud, finding in the diamond-and-watch trade a metaphor for the American soul at work.
Review
"A tender yet hardboiled coming-of-age story; a vivid, sometimes philosophical portrait of yearning and greed, of human love and human spoilage ؙ all of it mirrored in stripped-down, addictive prose. Clancy Martin has written a scary, funny blaze of a book." Sam Lipsyte
Review
"The feeling you get from the moment you open Clancy Martin's superb novel is one of inevitability. This is the inevitability of truth-telling, of tragedy, of the setup to a good joke, and, very possibly, the inevitability of the classic." Benjamin Kunkel
Synopsis
Bobby Clark is just 16 when he drops out of school to follow his big brother Jim into the jewelry business. What follows is the story of a young man's education in two of the oldest human passions, love and money.
Synopsis
Clancy Martin's critically acclaimed debut novel about a pair of brothers working the counter of a Dallas jewelry store is a veritable handbook of cons and dirty deals -- A Mamet-ish piece of intelligent noir that's perfect for paperback.
About the Author
Clancy Martin worked for many years in the fine jewelry business. He is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri. He has translated works by Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard and is currently at work on a translation of Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil.