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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Nov 2001, 320 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2002, 352 pages
Dee Gerard becomes the first woman to play in the NBA. How she gets there and the hilarious and sobering things that happen to her combine into a smart, funny, outrageous & wonderful novel.
"Truly hip, uproariously funny and, my god, it might even be true," wrote Elmore Leonard. "Bump and Run places Lupica high up among the funniest guys writing fiction." And now Lupica proves it again.
This is what happens when the desperate golden-boy owner of the worst pro basketball team in the world and his equally desperate golden-boy coach do the unthinkable: sign the first woman ever to play in the NBA. Her name is Dee Gerard, the daughter of a New York playground legend and the product of God having an exceptionally good day. A star in Europe, but weary of bad arenas, she retires---until the day a scout for the hapless New York Knights calls his boss: "I found you a point guard who is perfect, except for one thing." What, no heart? "It's not a heart, exactly. But you're close."
The league doesn't want the circus. The other players don't want her. The owner wants fannies in the seats. The sportswriters just want their column inches. What she wants . . . is to play in the best game there is. How she gets there, the hilarious and sobering things that happen to her, the personal and professional entanglements that spring up everywhere, the pitfalls of remaining old-school when all about her are tattooed, self-indulgent, young millionaires---this is the smart, funny, outrageous, wonderful story of Full Court Press.
All Eddie Holtz really knew about Monaco was that Grace Kelly got old and fat there after she married the guy Eddie's mother had always called Prince Reindeer.
It was different with his mother, who could talk about Monte Carlo and Monaco as if she were talking about Long Island City. But then she'd been fixed on the princess for as long as Eddie could remember. "I've always felt a bond," she'd say, "maybe because we're both the daughters of bricklayers." Then she'd sigh and say, "One of us grew up to marry a Grimaldi and one of us married your father, may the sonofabitch rest in peace." Eddie never knew whether that was true or not, the bricklayer part, he always had trouble separating fact from fiction with his mother, who didn't stop keeping scrapbooks on Princess Grace until she died in that car crash on the same road Eddie'd driven down from Cannes--the Grand Corniche--which was scarier than the Cyclone ride at Coney Island. When he finally ...
Carl Hiassen
...a brutally accurate, unsparingly funny satire - a naughty delight for true basketball fans. Elmore Leonard
Lupica talks the talk, a pro at picking up the rhythms of locker room voices. In other words, it's a howl.
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