Lottery

Lottery
By Patricia Wood


Product Description
Perry's IQ is only 76, but he's not stupid. His grandmother taught him everything he needs to know to survive: She taught him to write things down so he won't forget them. She taught him to play the lottery every week. And, most important, she taught him whom to trust. When Gram dies, Perry is left orphaned and bereft at the age of thirty-one. Then his weekly Washington State Lottery ticket wins him 12 million dollars, and he finds he has more family than he knows what to do with. Peopled with characters both wicked and heroic who leap off the pages, Lottery is a deeply satisfying, gorgeously rendered novel about trust, loyalty, and what distinguishes us as capable.


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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #8879 in Books
Published on: 2007-08-02
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
320 pages

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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Perry Crandall has an IQ of 76, but is not retarded, as he'll have you know: his IQ would need to be less than 75 for that, and he knows the difference even if others may not. Perry, the 32-year-old narrator of Wood's warm-fuzzy debut, has worked at the same marine supply store for half his life and lives with his wisecracking grandmother Gram, whose gems of folk wisdom help him along. But when Gram dies, Perry's selfish, money-grubbing family members swoop in and swindle him out of the proceeds from the sale of her house—and then come a-knocking again when Perry wins $12 million in the Washington State Lottery. Suddenly everyone is paying attention to Perry, but who can he trust? Even his friends from the marine supply store behave differently, and on top of everything else, Perry finds himself falling for convenience store clerk Cherry, who has problems of her own. Despite his family's shenanigans and sinister maneuverings, Perry holds his own and discovers abilities he didn't know he had. The wisdoms here run more cute than deep, but Wood's light humor and likable narrator should have mass appeal. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
As Perry L. Crandall tells us, his IQ may be 76, but he is not retarded. In fact, he has a job and lives well and happily with his Gran. Then, in quick succession, Gran dies, and Perry wins $12 million in the Washington State Lottery. Somehow, Perry must cope. Pacing his reading so that we hear the deliberation of Perrys speech, Paul Michael offers up a complex portrait of a stubborn, simple everyman. He also does well with the other characters, choosing to evoke personality rather than create radically different voices. The writing is sweet, but Michaels robust voice keeps sappiness at bay and creates an emotional listening experience. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
"Patricia Wood's debut novel tickles your funny bone, tugs your heartstrings, and redefines the word 'fortunate' all at once."
-Redbook

"[An] irresistible debut novel about what makes people good or bad, smart or stupid."
-Good Housekeeping


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Customer Reviews
Captivating!
I read this book and I was immediately moved to e-mail the author, something I rarely do. This was the best book I have read in quite a while. It definately goes in the "hard-to-put-down" category. It's a feel good, Forest Gump type story that gets you from the very beginning. I will recommend this book to everyone I know who reads.

Do you really want to win the lottery?
This is an interesting book about a slow and steady man who wins the state lottery and unleashes a storm of greedy relatives and strangers.
The characters are well-drawn and the ending is satisfying if a bit too convenient. The main flaw is a somewhat fuzzy sense of real time.
But there is humor and love and heartbreak. And when it is over, you may be thankful you have not won the lottery!

Choppy writing that drags on way too long
Lottery by Patricia Wood

After all the hoopla surrounding this book, I was greatly disappointed to actually pick up a used copy and read it. The entire story is told from the viewpoint of a mentally challenged thirty two year-old named Perry. His thoughts are disjointed and he rambles on through the whole book. Although the premise itself sounds enjoyable, the delivery is awful with choppy writing, no real "scenes", and a lot of rambling that sounds more like a six year-old with ADHD than a real mentally challenged person. (I have a mentally handicapped sibling and a child with ADHD, so I speak from experience.)

Perry's life is pretty simple and there are snippets here and there where he tells the reader exactly what his Gram told him, which stress that he is "lucky". So there's no surprise that Gram dies, leaving him without her social security checks, and he wins the lottery. Unfortunately, the "artistic" writing style of the author is choppy with many one-sentence paragraphs, disjointed with entire chapters of paragraphs that don't go well together, and unbelievable in places where Perry seems to go from a mentally challenged person to a rocket scientist in his vocabulary usage. (The author attributes this to his reading the dictionary, but that doesn't really give a person a good grasp of how to use the words, does it?) If you can watch an "artistic" movie like Cloverfield and not get a headache from all the terrible camerawork, then you'll probably love this book. I hated it.

So here are the basics of the plot. Everyone in Perry's family, except for himself and Gram, is either a lawyer or married to one. So when he wins the Washington state lottery after Gram's death, it's no surprise that they come out of the wood work to "help" him with his winnings. I won't spoil the ending, but it was terribly disappointing. After plugging away at an entire book of choppy awful writing, the payoff was not there. If you find the first five chapters disappointing and hard to read, my suggestion is to stop right there. It doesn't get any better and the last four chapters will disappoint. Not everyone gets what they deserve and it was just way too long and boring (the first six chapters could easily have been condensed into one).

FYI, the entire book is told in first person present. E.g. "We put more oil in Yo, because it leaks, and drive all the way to Seattle. Pretend snow fluffs down and it is perfect. Gram called snow that didn't stick pretend snow." This can get nauseating and, since the entire novel is told from Perry's viewpoint, you never really get to know the other characters well. They are shallow in more ways than one.