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.
One Good Hustle
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Review
LONGLIST 2012 – SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
“You must read Billie Livingston…. Sammie is smart, mouthy, literate and articulate, and she compels you to listen.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Very involving…. Livingstone portrays Sammie’s internal conflict with devastating precision…. Great storytelling.”
—NOW (Toronto) NNNN
“I loved, just loved One Good Hustle.”
—Susie Moloney, Numéro Cinq
“First-rate storytelling.”
—The Georgia Straight
“Billie Livingston has the knack of portraying teenage life in a way that is unerring and intimate.”
—Toronto Star
“Entertaining, thoughtful & perfectly crass from page 1, character is steady & strong — Written feverishly: a primal scream.”
—The One Line Review
“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.”
—Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach and Blood Sports
“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.”
—Rebecca Godfrey, author of The Torn Skirt and Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk
“In One Good Hustle, Billie Livingston once again masterfully deploys her edgy wit to create a perfectly pitched adolescent voice, an unforgettable heroine whose scam artist toughness is matched only by her yearning for authenticity. A great read from start to finish.”
—Lilian Nattel, author of Web of Angels
“You must read Billie Livingston…. Sammie is smart, mouthy, literate and articulate, and she compels you to listen.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Very involving…. Livingstone portrays Sammie’s internal conflict with devastating precision…. Great storytelling.”
—NOW (Toronto) NNNN
“I loved, just loved One Good Hustle.”
—Susie Moloney, Numéro Cinq
“First-rate storytelling.”
—The Georgia Straight
“Billie Livingston has the knack of portraying teenage life in a way that is unerring and intimate.”
—Toronto Star
“Entertaining, thoughtful & perfectly crass from page 1, character is steady & strong — Written feverishly: a primal scream.”
—The One Line Review
“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.”
—Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach and Blood Sports
“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.”
—Rebecca Godfrey, author of The Torn Skirt and Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk
“In One Good Hustle, Billie Livingston once again masterfully deploys her edgy wit to create a perfectly pitched adolescent voice, an unforgettable heroine whose scam artist toughness is matched only by her yearning for authenticity. A great read from start to finish.”
—Lilian Nattel, author of Web of Angels
About the Author
Billie Livingston published her critically acclaimed first novel, Going Down Swinging, in 2000. Her first book of poetry, The Chick at the Back of the Church was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. Her second novel, Cease to Blush, was a Globe and Mail Best Book and her story collection, Greedy Little Eyes, was the winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award as well the CBC’s inaugural Bookie Award for short fiction.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By sean s.
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Billie Livingston is a writer based in Vancouver, and One Good Hustle is the story of a teenage girl in Burnaby, B.C. in the mid-1980s.
Sammie Bell is a 16-year-old living, or rather surviving, in a very dysfunctional situation. Her father, a con man, is absent, and her mother Marlene is a pathetic, melodramatic, alcoholic, would-be suicide:
"`I'm going to throw myself off a pier,' Marlene had said, and then put more lipstick on. My mother has always liked the idea of looking pretty when she dies. So she kept at it, putting on layer after layer of mascara while she talked about how she would dive into the ocean. `My bones drifting free, finally free,' she said, as if it was the most gorgeous ambition ever.'"
After her absent father ignores her desperate cry for help, Sammie wisely takes refuge where she can, which turns out to be the home of a friend - actually only a friendly acquaintance. When you're falling off a cliff, you cling to even the most slender branch.
One Good Hustle is the story of her survival and even growth on this branch, living the challenges that every adolescent faces, plus a host of burdens far too heavy for one so young. When the most basic security and stability is lacking in life, moral questions become a lot more ambiguous and nuanced.
Similar in sensibility to Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals, Billie Livingston's novel is a good read full of insights on the human, all-too-human tendency to cling emotionally to one's family members, even when every piece of rational evidence tells you to cut your losses. But it is also an uplifting story of human resilience.
Sammie Bell is a 16-year-old living, or rather surviving, in a very dysfunctional situation. Her father, a con man, is absent, and her mother Marlene is a pathetic, melodramatic, alcoholic, would-be suicide:
"`I'm going to throw myself off a pier,' Marlene had said, and then put more lipstick on. My mother has always liked the idea of looking pretty when she dies. So she kept at it, putting on layer after layer of mascara while she talked about how she would dive into the ocean. `My bones drifting free, finally free,' she said, as if it was the most gorgeous ambition ever.'"
After her absent father ignores her desperate cry for help, Sammie wisely takes refuge where she can, which turns out to be the home of a friend - actually only a friendly acquaintance. When you're falling off a cliff, you cling to even the most slender branch.
One Good Hustle is the story of her survival and even growth on this branch, living the challenges that every adolescent faces, plus a host of burdens far too heavy for one so young. When the most basic security and stability is lacking in life, moral questions become a lot more ambiguous and nuanced.
Similar in sensibility to Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals, Billie Livingston's novel is a good read full of insights on the human, all-too-human tendency to cling emotionally to one's family members, even when every piece of rational evidence tells you to cut your losses. But it is also an uplifting story of human resilience.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Reader Writer Runner
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
In her third novel, Billie Livingston transports the reader to 1980s Burnaby, B.C. and chronicles a difficult summer in the life of Sammie Bell. This razor-tongued 16-year-old has two con artists for parents: an absent, card shark father and a depressed, suicidal, alcoholic mother. When Sammie leaves her mom to stay with her friend, Jill, she finds herself caught between the Christian ideals of her pseudo–foster family and the shady but alluring world of her hustler parents and their ramshackle group of so-called friends.
Livingston has created nuanced, multi-dimensional characters who at once display abstinence, lawlessness, caring, hypocrisy, loyalty and flaw. Sammie herself has a tough but sensitive, sarcastic but sweet voice, which lingers after the book ends. Apart from a climactic scene that wraps up too quickly, "One Good Hustle" makes for an enjoyable, fast and entertaining read.
Livingston has created nuanced, multi-dimensional characters who at once display abstinence, lawlessness, caring, hypocrisy, loyalty and flaw. Sammie herself has a tough but sensitive, sarcastic but sweet voice, which lingers after the book ends. Apart from a climactic scene that wraps up too quickly, "One Good Hustle" makes for an enjoyable, fast and entertaining read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Billie Livingston's work always reminds me of the great Kent Haruf. The beautiful simplicity and heartbreakingly accurate arrow to the heart, is omnipresent in all her work, and One Good Hustle is no exception. In this, her fourth book, she gives us Marlene and Sammie, mother and daughter, tied together with fierce loyalty and secret criminality. The story starts with Sammie taking a little respite from the bitter responsibility that is her mother. Like a lot of daughters, she has great hopes that her father will somehow change and become the hero in the story. Sammie has a foot in two worlds, and is trying to figure out where she belongs.
The "one good hustle" of the title ties in nicely with the ending which is in no way pat or even necessarily happy, but is very satisfying. The kind of book you wish didn't end. As with Going Down Swinging and Cease to Blush, this is book I'll probably read again. And probably again. Maybe that's Livingston's best hustle, eh?
The "one good hustle" of the title ties in nicely with the ending which is in no way pat or even necessarily happy, but is very satisfying. The kind of book you wish didn't end. As with Going Down Swinging and Cease to Blush, this is book I'll probably read again. And probably again. Maybe that's Livingston's best hustle, eh?
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