Take a photo of a barcode or cover
tasharobinson 's review for:
Nightmare Alley
by William Lindsay Gresham
This is a pretty incredible book — a synthesis of the author's life experiences in carnivals, as a journalist and writer and researcher, of the things he went through trying to treat his lifelong depression through spiritualism, psychiatric treatment, mesmerism, Protestant and Eastern religion, and more. It's full of clever grifts and swindles, big philosophical speeches, pulpit-pounding sermons, and hallucinatory rambles. But under it all is an indelible character, a man constantly on the make, never satisfied and perpetually hunting for something to fill the holes left by his upbringing. It's a real classic, a portrait of an era that goes far beyond either the 1947 film version or the 2021 Guillermo del Toro movie, both of which capture different key aspects of it while leaving a great deal out. It's a real ride to read, lyrical and gritty at the same time.