The Return of the Player - by Michael Tolkin (Paperback)

About the Book

In this follow-up to "The Player," the Hollywood classic that was adapted into the celebrated movie by Robert Altman, Tolkin again delivers a brilliant, incisive portrait of power, wealth, and family in contemporary society gone out of control with greed and excess.

Book Synopsis

In The Player, the Hollywood classic that was adapted into the celebrated movie by Robert Altman, film executive Griffin Mill got away with murder. Now Mill is back, down to his last $6 million, and broke. His second wife wants to leave him. His first wife still loves him. His children hate him, and believing that the end of the world is happening, he wants to save them all, with one last desperate plan to save his life: quit the studio and convince an almost billionaire that he has the road map and the mettle to make them both achieve savage wealth. In The Return of the Player, Tolkin again delivers a brilliant, incise portrait of power, wealth, and family in contemporary society gone out of control with greed and excess.

Review Quotes

"By far the widest-ranging novel of Tolkin's four-book career . . . The Return of the Player opens up the lives of the people surrounding ÝGriffin¨, which creates Tolkin's most fully realized world yet." -- Todd Peterson

"How often do you have to pause, reduced to openmouthed wonder, when reading a novel: You can't believe how true it is, can't believe how funny, can't believe the story is headed where it seems to be heading, can't believe someone alive is actually pulling it off? Not often? Maybe never? Well, here it is. Tolkin did it." -- Stephen Gaghan

"Lively and freshly biting . . . The Return of the Player is classic satire . . . and with its gimiet eye on today's spiritual weariness and cash frenzy, is very much a novel of this time and moment." -- David Walton

"Mill's antiheroic effort to wring love and meaning from a loveless and meaningless life is heartfelt and cynical."

"Mr. Tolkin remains Impressive as a scorched-earth social satirist." -- Janet Maslin

"Poor Griffin Mill--once a mover--is down to his last six million dollars, and that isn't the worst of it in Tolkin's sharply observed sequel to The Player. Tolkin's till got a firm hold on Tinseltown's fluttery pulse."

"The finest novel of Hollywood since The Last Tycoon. I loved It, and when I wasn't laughing aloud, I was rereading it, gasping at the athletics and soul of the thing." -- Jon Robin Baitz

"This crisp amorality tale boasts enviable verbal energy, thanks to a hectoring omniscient voice that blends the accents of an Old Testament prophet with those of a favor-currying film industry press agent. . . . This is vivid, nasty fun."

"Tolkin himself is a dying breed: among the last of those in Hollywood who move comfortably from big picture to small project, from screenwriting to directing to novel-writing." -- Matthew Debord

"Tolkin's not just a brilliant social satirist of Hollywood and the spiritual cravings of its sharkish millionaires; of chilling upper-echelon marriage, adultery, and child-rearing rites--he's also a rollicking and hilarious writer. Though just as you're admiring the hairpin turns of his sentences or his way with a barb, you realize you've left the comforts of satire and are in the midst of big existential questions and that Tolkin is a pretty serious guy." -- Laura Kipnis

"Tolkin's understated style and over-the-top characters continue to amaze."

"Truly outrageous and actually endearing." -- Sherryl Connelly