Product Description

Audrey Unger hasn’t seen her father since she was a child. A professional poker player and compulsive gambler, he left home when she was eleven years old and disappeared from her life for good.

Now in her early thirties and poised on the edge of her own mid-life crisis, she makes the decision to try and find him. To discover what it was that made him gamble. To discover what drove him to give her up.

Big Louie is the key to her father’s world. An agoraphobic, card playing, Hans Christian Anderson sized giant, who hasn’t left his flat in over three years.

Fighting a battle with his own phobias, he takes Audrey on a journey of self discovery. He guides her through the subtleties of professional poker; the thrill of high stakes gambling; and on towards a final hand of cards that will change both of their lives for good.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129681 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-13
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Company
'A moving, often funny story of high stakes, lost love and finding your place in the world'

Review
'Combines laugh-out loud funny passages alongside sections that make you want to cry' (Independent )

'Great comic characters, and smart one-liners' (Observer )

'An uplifting, original tale' (Sunday Mirror )

'A moving, often funny story of high stakes, lost love and finding your place in the world' (Company )

Sunday Mirror
'An uplifting, original tale'

Customer Reviews

Poker, Pickles and Prime numbers!
Audrey Ungar is the unlikely but incredible heroine of 'The Big Blind'. She eats pickles from the jar and sorts her peas into prime numbers. Audrey dreams of seeing her father again; a man who jeopardised everything, including his family, to become a professional gambler.

Around the same time Audrey meets Big Louie, an American agoraphobic with OCD, who hasn't left his flat for two years. The two of them hit it off and Louie begins to teach Audrey how to play poker.

This is a great novel, at times funny and others heartbreaking. It's a tale of unlikely friendships, poker, interests and obsessions and the extent to which family defines who we are.

I loved it.

Expectations Dashed
I'm not sure what I expected when I ordered a copy. No, wait, I am. I thought it'd be awful. I thought, "How can someone who strums a guitar and wah wah wah's into a mic (albeit, in the most wonderful of ways) be any good at writing a book?" I soon found out, because even after reading the first (and most crucial in any book) paragraph, I wanted to read on.

The book is well paced, with characters who are so real that you can't help but want to know their fates. And I think that is where Louise Wener beats others - she has created real people in her type. People who get depressed, who laugh and cry - and also eat an unimaginable amount of gerkins. People who you can imagine knowing. People who you might already know. And that is a hard thing to do so well. But she has managed it.

More importantly, she got my lazy [..] to write a review. Now that is something.

I'm glad I ordered this. I was very impressed.

Amazing!
Finished this an hour ago & had to come on here to write a review, what an excellent book. I laughed & had a few tears roll down my cheeks too. I am a Texas Hold'em player, although when I bought the book I actually didn't realise it was about poker as I didn't read the back cover.
Her characters are superb, everyone of them a "real" person. I really can't recommend this book enough, probably one of my favourites. Whether you play poker or not (for me it was just an huge bonus) this is a moving & funny book and very very well written.