A South Coast Today Best Fiction Pick from 2015 "With this plainspoken, highly readable coming-of-age story, McManus adds another winning hand to a growing body of work on the hearts and souls lost to the game of poker." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred "What John R. Powers did for Catholic boys on the South Side of Chicago in his classic memoir Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? (1975), McManus does for their counterparts in suburban Chicago ... This is well-trod ground, of course, but McManus enlivens the familiar material with zesty prose that goes beyond the jokes to capture that ever-melancholy transition from innocence to experience." --Booklist "In writing about poker Jim McManus has managed to write about everything, and it's glorious." --David Sedaris "McManus has captured a Chicago Catholic kid's universe with an accuracy that made me laugh. A royal flush. Bravo!" --Sandra Cisneros "Reading The Education of a Poker Player, I realized I had completely forgotten what it had been like to be a boy. McManus remembers it exactly. There are many things to admire--the delights of the Kennedy era Catholic household, the movement of a mind through time--but what stuck with me most was how McManus nails it dead: being a kid isn't anything like being an adult. Instead it is something stranger, something wilder, and something we shouldn't forget. Consumed with desire for girls, a place in the clergy, and a secret obsession with a certain gambling game that is played with 52 cards, McManus's narrator will help you reclaim something you may have lost. Pick up this book." --Jesse Ball "The Education of a Poker Player is a thoroughly refreshing read, and you know that with McManus you're going to get an engaging journey. McManus has been there and done it, and he certainly speaks with the voice of experience." --Sam Marsden, Jackpot.co.uk "When McManus writes about the social dynamics of teenage boys he is hilarious and dazzling. This poignancy continues throughout the book's second half as Vince becomes more emotionally complex. McManus' writing is often brilliant -- especially on baseball, poker, Catholic arcana, the juvenile humor of young men, and impressionable interactions between the young and authority." --Alex Lemon, Dallas Morning News "This entertaining coming-of-age tale treads lightly on issues of guilt, opting instead to allow witty cultural references and a likable voice to carry the narrative...the most memorable scenes here don't involve much poker at all; the fun comes from discovering with Vince that sin (and life, thus far) can't always be measured in Hail Marys and Our Fathers." --Publishers Weekly "Overall The Education of a Poker Player isn't going to make you a better card player...What it will give you is a little better appreciation of the game, perhaps a remembrance of how you got your start, and bring a smile to your face as you relive those memories." --Earl Burton, Poker News Daily "[T]he framework here...reminded me James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, as it follows one boy, Vincent Killeen, from ages 9 to 17 growing up in the Catholic Church. Like Artist, you get the sense Vincent is McManus's alter ego -- "altar" ego? -- and, like Artist, the voice matures as the narrator ages." --Lauren Daley, South Coast Today "McManus is a great novelist and poet. His stories are deeply humorous and stunningly insightful, finely crafted, and filled with phrases to be savored." --Aaron Brown, Wilmott Magazine "When McManus writes about the social dynamics of teenage boys he is hilarious and dazzling. This poignancy continues throughout the book's second half as Vince becomes more emotionally complex. McManus' writing is often brilliant -- especially on baseball, poker, Catholic arcana, the juvenile humor of young men and impressionable interactions between the young and authority." -Alex Lemons, Dallas Morning News