Jackpot

On its most basic level, JACKPOT involves a character who feels she is missing out on life, and, while on a trip to the Bahamas, tries to remedy this by gambling, drinking, and fornicating her way to paradise. The novel can be seen as a cautionary tale about what happens to someone who thinks the whole world has been having a party to which she wasn't invited, and that the way to crash it is to ditch what meagre sense of self she has. Encountering JACKPOT is like entering a vortex; the protagonist's compulsive, self-destructive behavior and the reader's compulsion to follow this from page to page start to feel like one and the same. The novel is similar, in terms of this effect, to Sylvia Plath's BELL JAR--we don't simply observe the descent toward madness, but are carried along and seduced, a step at a time, by the protagonist's manic, internal logic, until we realize we're making the journey ourselves. The detail and emotional accuracy with which Keller captures the check and flow of her character's thought processes and actions in the hotel casino, as her hopes, desperation, alcohol consumption, and losses keep pace with one another give JACKPOT a subterranean, almost Dostoyevskian feel. From the start, Maggie, the protagonist, sees herself as surrounded by yet barred from various forms of what she takes to be "paradise." She feels that the neighborhood she lives in is not one of the "right" neighborhoods, and, unlike the acquaintances she envies, she doesn't move within a circle of beautiful friends she assumes get everything they want sexually and otherwise. The novel is mainly set on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and when her friend, Robin, is talking Maggie into accompanying her on this trip, what closes the deal is Robin's off-handed comment about having "f***ed her brains out" the last time she was there. The title, beyond its immediate reference to what Maggie hopes to win in the casino, comes to reflect different forms of the dreamed-for or lusted-after paradise from which Maggie craves to end her exile. The original literary characters to be obsessed by what proved to be a false paradise from which they felt excluded, and who found what they thought was a neat short-cut which ended up taking them in the opposite direction, were Milton's Adam and Eve. The imaginative brilliance of JACKPOT is reflected in its ability to reveal and make new this archetypal pattern, while seeming to focus so relentlessly and exclusively on the here and now immediacy of Maggie and her small world. This is an extraordinary achievement, made even more so by the extent to which it seems hidden, at first, within the fabric of the book's immediacy and accessibility.

"Jackpot" is the haunting tale of a woman, so insecure, so toally devoid of any sense of self-worth, that she is nakedly vulnerable to every slight, real or imagined. Having no inner resources and unable to connect in a meaningful way with any of the people around her, Maggie, feeling abandoned, embarks on a path of self-destruction. This is a frightening and cautionary description of a young woman's descent into near madness as she becomes ever more detached from reality. The reader watches - yes, watches is the correct word, so compelling is the imagery - in horrified fascination as Maggie spirals downward. Her inner monologue reveals not only her utter vulnerability, but her pathetic and futile attemps to fill the empty vessel that is herself, to find in herself some redeeming worth. In the end, she can no longer keep up the pretense. She knows who and what she is and finally, facing that realization, she summons up the strength to take control of her fate at last.

i just finished reading jackpot and feel as though i've been away in some exotic land and have come back, enriched and wiser, and more sober. jackopt is honest and brutal in ways i like a book to be honest and brutal.

From The CriticsPublisher's WeeklyA Bahamian vacation turns into a nightmarish dreamworld in Tsipi Keller's smart, sly Jackpot. Maggie has long been cowed by her beautiful friend Robin, so when Robin leaves Paradise Island for a spur-of-the-moment sailing trip, Maggie has a chance to shine. Instead, she descends into wild gambling and even wilder sex, though she somehow retains her innocence. Keller expertly charts Maggie's transformation in this accomplished and oddly gripping novel. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Tsipi Keller has written a spell-binding portrait of one woman's gambling addiction. Innocent and alert, Maggie is a plain Jane who flowers among "les fleurs du mal" and casino life of Paradise Island in the Bahamas where she nearly loses herself. It's the reader's job to figure out what complex needs the jackpot fulfills and fails to assauge. The gambler's primary goal is to win money, but Keller suggests that Maggie's longing for her lost mother and ironic emulation of her glamorous friend Robin are at the poles of Maggie's desperation.