Hustler!

by Henry Williamson

Paperback.

174 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Henry William Williamson was an English soldier, naturalist, farmer and ruralist writer known for his natural history and social history novels, as well as for his fascist sympathies. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter.

Henry Williamson is best known for a tetralogy of four novels which consists of The Beautiful Years (1921), Dandelion Days (1922), The Dream of Fair Women (1924) and The Pathway (1928). These novels are collectively known as The Flax of Dream and they follow the life of Willie Maddison from boyhood to adulthood in a rapidly changing world.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hustler! is an old book, but it is still really good. Henry Williamson is just a plain old character. Being the fact that Henry is a real person and this is his real story, it makes him all the more of a character. Henry lives in a live of poverty where his way of going through life is hustling. Robbing people, sticking up stores, dealing drugs, and selling safety stickers is just an average day for Henry and it is an interesting counter-view to the justice system we have. Typical America sees criminals as evil, but Henry sheds a new light on the life of criminal. I liked most of his stories, but the way they were told could get really confusing which is annoying, but something that can be adjusted to and once you get past it, you start to like the book. The explanations of certain words at the bottom of the pages also help out a lot. I also really like the characters in the book. Sometimes I wonder how Henry got associated with some of the people he's with and how he can go into jail and not come out different until the very end of the book. The way the book ends is strange, but satisfying, and if you read the commentary after the ending you can truly understand it. I think everybody should read this book because a lot of people have a set in stone image of how a criminal looks like and is. This book can easily flip someone's view from criminals being completely evil to people who have a different way of making money. The idea that Henry is an old gangster for the people like him shows that he didn't really get a fair chance and I felt bad that the creativity that Henry harbored inside of him was never brought to a point where it could help his, and other peoples, lives and that the "man" always brought him down without ever really helping him. I highly recommend the book be read, despite the sometimes hard to understand language.

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

i usually love books like this ... but this read so dry. while the events of his life were crazy, the delivery of it was bad.