Sam Kanter, the hero of this book (by turns wryly hilarious and deadly in earnest) is a bipolar chess teacher living in Greenwich Village during the 1990s. He drifts in and out of late-night jazz clubs, coffee houses, and chess venues frequented by a vivid set of characters who live their lives while the rest of us are long asleep. He drifts in and out of hospitals, in and out of his mother's apartment, in and out of relationships-and, irresistibly, ineffably, into the reader's heart as he stumbles and strides into his future.

What saves Sam is a ruthless integrity, a transparent honesty (easy enough when we turn it on others, pretty tough when we aim it at ourselves), and an uncanny ability to see the obvious that rises to the level of genius. And in the course of trying to figure out what really makes him tick, if we're really lucky, we may even discover what makes us tick.