Long-listed for 2012 Giller Prize
Short-listed for Cdn Library Association’s YA Book of the Year
Globe and Mail Best Book Selection
Now Magazine Top 10 Book Selection
January Magazine Best Book Selection
Salty Ink Best Novel Selection
From award-winning writer Billie Livingston, an unsparing novel of loyalty and survival that is fierce, sharp and funny even when it's breaking your heart.
The child of 2 con artists, 16-year-old Sammie Bell always prided herself on knowing the score. But now she finds herself backed into a corner. After a hustle gone dangerously wrong, her mother, Marlene, is sliding into an abyss of alcoholic depression, spending her days fantasizing aloud about death--a goal Sammie is tempted to help her accomplish. Horrified by the appeal of this, Sammie packs a bag and leaves her mother to her own devices.
With her father missing in action, she has nowhere else to go but the home of a friend with 2 parents who seem to actually love their daughter and each other--and who awkwardly try to extend some semblance of family to Sammie. Throughout a long summer of crisis among the normals, Sammie is torn between her longing for the approval of the con-man father she was named for and her desire for the "weird, spearmint-fresh feeling" of life in the straight world. Sammie wants to be normal but fears that where she comes from makes that beyond the realm of possibility.
One Good Hustle chronicles 2 months in Sammie Bell's struggle with her dread that she is somehow doomed genetically to be just another hustler.
REVIEWS
“You must read Billie Livingston. She is the sort of writer who rejects pomp, instead dealing out the plain story in language that is undecorated by attempts to be an artiste, and which conjures place and character seamlessly. And she makes Dickens look like Little Mary Sunshine.”
“A wondrous tour-de-force of teenage dissension. ”
“First rate storytelling...effortlessly revealing her characters’ brawling hearts.” ”
“...invariably fascinating. Livingston portrays Sammie’s internal conflict with devastating precision. Great storytelling. (NNNN) ”
“Charming and breezy. Sammie’s voice is lovely. She’s tough and precocious but hardly jaded. This is a book about real people living real lives.”
“Livingston has a talent for the defining element...Throughout, the writing is deftly observational.”
“...even with all of its celebrated and award-winning predecessors, Livingston’s fourth book, One Good Hustle, may be the best of the bunch thus far. One Good Hustle is sharp and sweet and Sammie Bell proves to be one of those memorable characters readers are searching for every time they open a book.”
“Billie Livingston is deservedly one of Canada’s most prominent writers...One Good Hustle warrants a wide readership.”
“Livingston has once again given us a stellar novel about people we see every day on the street but rarely ever know...a humorous gritty tale set in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby in the mid-80s that is both gripping and realistic.”
“.The novel takes a lighthearted approach to its dark terrain; leaves you smiling, liking the characters. Each has flaws but a charm or redeeming trait to make them feel perfectly rendered and perfectly human. It’s funny, it’s sad, and it’s written in a way that draws you in, well-paced, and laced with unforgettable characters....It’s on Salty Ink’s Best Books of 2012 List. The Giller jury got that much right this year.”
“It’s a good read. And Sammie’s wit, her sharp observations and acid tongue, lend the novel the same quirky, edgy appeal evident in Livingston’s other novels. ”
“Stuck in a rough hustle, the sensitive daughter of two con artists uses badass honesty and wit to survive. Funny, sharp and tender, One Good Hustle delivers a gritty page-turner about what happens when love and loyalty collide with self-preservation.”
“What a joy to read a work so brave and unsettling. Billie Livingston holds nothing back: the terrors of teenage life; the charm of criminals; and the innocence and anger of girls on the run. Sammie Bell is Holden Caulfield, if he was born on the wrong side of the tracks and wandering through Vancouver streets.”