This was an audiobook which I enjoyed immensely. It's a spoken version of a 1983 novel. I first came to this, as I imagine many people did, via the excellent Netflix series starring Anya Taylor-Joy, and it's like they took the TV show directly from the book with very few changes, often lifting dialog directly. Subsequently reading the book - or rather listening to it read beautifully by Amy Landon - was never boring though, because it was so well-written and it has its own vibe. It's also really is amusing at times.
If I have only one criticism, it's that there's rather too much chess in it for my taste. I can play chess, but I'm not a chess player per se, so I wasn't remotely able to follow the games described in the novel. The TV show had the benefit of showing the players moving pieces on boards, but it never focused on the board for long, so it wasn't possible to really follow the moves or the game there either. Maybe a seasoned chess player could, but I couldn't. In the novel it was considerably less clear, and so I felt the chess was somewhat overdone, but it wasn't deathly to listen to, so it wasn't bad. Apart from that, I really enjoyed the novel.
The story is a fictional one, of a character named Beth (Elizabeth) Harmon, who is abandoned by her father and later loses her mother and ends up in an orphanage where she discovers an interest in chess through encounters with the janitor. She discovers she has an innate skill at the game. Beth is unexpectedly adopted by the Wheatley family and is again abandoned by the father figure, but develops a close relationship with her new mother, who has no interest in chess, but who encourages Beth to play in tournaments once she realizes that money is to be made. Mrs Wheatley isn't mercenary though, and she and Beth develop a sweet and very functional working relationship when it comes to chess play. It was a joy to watch - and then listen to - how their relationship grew and how they navigated sometimes thorny days.
Beth has set-backs, but grows and learns, and excels at chess, rising through the ranks of players to become a US champion - and then has to face the Russians, whom she fears - one in particular. I loved this novel and I wonder, sometimes, if that's because in many ways if mirrors my own novel, Seasoning which is not about chess but about soccer. Anyway, I commend The Queen's Gambit as highly entertaining, beautifully-written, and very readable - or listenable. Or watchable!
