Chancing It

"When Martin spoke afresh, he sounded like someone Steve had heard from the doorway of the bookmaker's. 'Go on then: heads ...'"

And so a matter of some consequence is settled on the toss of a coin.

For Steve, gambling on the outcome of a cricket match, having a flutter on the horses, trying his luck on scratch cards, even playing virtual roulette, are nothing daunting. But then Steve is only sixteen years old, and doesn't have anything much to lose.

For his stepfather Martin, who has mortgaged the roof over the family's head to underwrite his latest business enterprise, the stakes are considerably higher, however ...

"A wry, politically charged novel, Chancing It is much more than a simple fable. Yorke's prose is often poetic, his themes unexpectedly complex; the hapless characters and their sad games of chance are unforgettable."
The Independent on Sunday

"well-worded, well-formed, funny, grave and quietly suspenseful."
Sunday Herald

"Yorke writes in a simple, unadorned style, and his narrative is straightforward and uncluttered. Chancing It is, however, more carefully wrought than its rather plain surface might suggest....It... makes one hope there will be rather less of a wait for his third [novel]."
The Daily Telegraph

"Yorke is both an astute, sometimes lyrical, observer of this environment and a deft storyteller, inexorably raising the stakes for his harassed but likeable characters until the last spin of the wheel."
Giles Newington in the Irish Times

Book of the Year Nominations:

"At almost 80 I read less, but this year I had a fairly wide choice. Matthew Yorke's Chancing It has a 16-year-old hero like D.H. Lawrence's Rocking-Horse Winner in a Yorkshire town. A fine evocation of places, people and period."
Daily Telegraph, December 6th 2005 chosen by George Melly

"Matthew Yorke ... has ... written a deserving book in Chancing It ... a quiet and funny cherishing of North Country punters in the grip of their compulsion."
Times Literary Supplement, December 1st 2005 chosen by Karl Miller

"...an imaginative novel set in a Yorkshire town that has lost its old function. It rings true, and is written with an unusual understanding of, and sympathy for, so-called ordinary people."
The Scotsman, December 10th 2005 chosen by Allan Massie