The Grift

The Grift is just that, a scam, or...is it really more of a gift (noting the dropped "r" in the title)? This is where the questions start, right from the beginning. A woman who has been trained by her mother to be a fortuneteller since she was a child learns that telling people what they want to hear can be very profitable. As an adult, she stumbles into actually being able to see what the future holds for her clients and she is compelled to tell them the truth, but suddenly they are not so eager for her advice. In fact, business becomes nearly non-existent, friends disappear and everything begins to fall apart around her. There are multiple storylines going on throughout the book, following her clients lives, but they all revolve around thier psychic friend. Soon they are intermingled and when she becomes involved in the circumstances of a murder she must choose to use the gift that she has, but also her skills as a grifter. Beyond the actual story, this is a great book that makes you think about the line between telling someone the whole truth or telling them what they want or need to hear. It raises interesting questions about the secrets that everyone keeps and what one would choose to do with the power of knowing the secrets of others. I found it a very interesting and unique read. I would definitely recommend it as something truly different and thought provoking.

of Debra Ginsberg's work, three non-fiction books about her family and two stand-alone novels. The plot of The G(r)ift is best described by other reviewers, but I will note that the plot, the characters, and the good writing add up to a very good, hard-to-put down novel. The "tag" lines suggested by the review model give "psychics", "suspense" and other like words to describe this work. I suppose it's all of that, but basically Ginsberg's writing comes down to simply an interesting story about people.

I really enjoyed this book. It was very different and well written. It had a strong beginning, never lagged in the middle, and I was very touched by the ending. The Grift had a strong central female character. I thought it would make a wonderful movie. They say that there are no good roles for women. With a well written screenplay, Marina would be a real gem. The secondary characters were also well written. I could really sympathize with some of them, on their hard earned road to self-discovery. Part mystery, part love story, part psychological study, The Grift, had something for everyone.

When Marina Marks, the heroine of "The Grift", was five years old, her mother takes her to a seaside tarot card reader and fortune teller named Madame Z to have her fortune read. Madame Z goes into a sort of trance, trembles, and tells the mother that the girl "has the gift", and that she will be a psychic with real psychic powers. But the mother is neither impressed with the drama and the show of Madame Z, nor does she believe her. She grabs her daughter and leaves the psychic in a hurry, muttering: "This crazy freak doesn't know what she's talking about." Nevertheless, she buys a deck of tarot cards for Marina, and the girl starts using the cards first as a hobby, and learns very quickly that she can earn a decent income if she takes up fortune telling as her profession. Marina tells fortunes mainly based on her intuition, and acute observations of her client's physical attributes such as mannerisms and demeanor. She even manages to earn reputation as a good psychic. A few years after her mother dies, however, Marina relocates from Florida to San Diego. Then she is astonished one day to discover that she had suddenly developed true psychic powers, and that in her visions she could see her clients' past, present and future very clearly. But she doesn't realize that she should use her new-found psychic powers with care and that she should also use tact and diplomacy while telling a client's fortune. Instead, she starts telling fortunes rather bluntly, thereby scaring her clients away. And her business, which she had carefully built up over the years, begins to slide down and disintegrate. The novel has several interesting, well-drawn and well-developed characters such as Cooper, a handsome gay man in love with a closeted psychiatrist, and Madeline, a young gold-digger married to an old but fabulously rich man. Madeline thinks she can save her marriage by conceiving a child of this tycoon with roving eyes. And there is Rosa, a sympathetic woman who operates a beach side stand selling coffee, pastries and cookies. All these characters ring true to life, and are believable. Written in simple but elegant prose, the novel builds up momentum slowly at first, and then begins to grip the readers mind, becoming brighter and funnier as it progresses, and then dazzles: "It wasn't her way, for example, to go for a big score with a client and then never see that client again. Hers was a slow build of confidence and a fostering of need. Many of her clients treated her with the same deference to authority that they showed their doctors. Marina had always believed that it took more skill to develop trust than inspire fear. It paid better in the long run, too, and was much less likely to end with angry clients feeling as though they'd been shafted." This charming, funny and very witty novel is at heart a conundrum. Marina's newly acquired psychic power should have boosted her fortune telling business. It should have been a blessing; instead it acts like a

A little girl with a neglectful, addicted mother meets a boardwalk gypsy who promptly tells the little girl she has "a gift." Fast forward 30 years, and we meet the little girl as a grown woman: Marina. Early in her life, Marina found that while the men her mom brought home might be tempted by a pretty little girl, a girl who was psychic frightened them. so she pretended -- and got so good at intuitively reading people that it became her career. What happens when her Grift suddenly comes true, and she does indeed have the Gift? People don't want to know the truth. They want to hear that their dreams will come true. Her entire business is at risk, and the regulars she has worked with become hostile. This entire novel moves forward on this premise. This is not a mystery novel, but a novel about characters: their dreams, their motivations, their good traits and their bad. This is an excellent book. Really surprisingly engaging. I recommend it without hesitation.