Meeting Meyer
An excerpt from “The House Always Wins” by Brian Rouff:
From there, my eyes wandered to a leather recliner on the far side of the room, where an ancient man in equally ancient PJS sat puffing on a stogie the size of a torpedo, the tip glowing an intermittent bright orange, the smoke curling up to the ceiling in the flickering light of the television screen. And, as if the entire scene weren’t strange enough already, the man was as ethereal as the smoke, a shimmering silver-gray specter drifting in and out of, well, whatever passed for reality in this room. Not much taller than a jockey, he was sporadically solid enough for me to discern a few features: the head bald, other than a scattering of wispy white hairs, large gnarled hands, and glasses with windowframe lenses held up by ears the size of satellite dishes.
As my raggedy mind tried vainly to process the spectacle, the man or whatever he was turned to me and said in a rusty voice, “I like what you’ve done with the place.” of the story took place in Las Vegas and he referred to ‘the on-ramp to Maryland Parkway.’ I’m reading that and I’m like, ‘Oh, come on now.’
“The authenticity of my adopted home here in Las Vegas I take very seriously. And, then, within that, I want to create these characters that stay with you. When somebody says, ‘I want a sequel’ or ‘I want to learn more’ or ‘I was sorry when it ended,’ that’s the ultimate compliment.”
Rouff considers his book a genrebuster — part coming of age and part road trip story, as well as “a love story, a ghost story, a Vegas story.”
Writing from the point-of-view of a twenty-something woman was challenging, Rouff says, but “I’ve got grown daughters, and I work with about 10 young women who are mostly in that millennial category, so I was surrounded by consultants. So during the time I was writing from Anna’s viewpoint, I really felt I was in tune with the female side of me, which I didn’t know I had.”
Contact John Przybys at reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280. Follow @Jjprzybys on Twitter.