Wardini Books review: Lucky's by Andrew Pippos

Lucky's by Andrew Pippos

Lucky's - Andrew Pippos (Pan Macmillan, $37.99)

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reviewed by Louise Ward, Wardini Books

Lucky's is a franchise of restaurants founded by the fictional Lucky himself, Vasilis Mallios, a Greek American who ends up making his life in Australia at the end of World War II.

Switching easily and informatively between times and places, we meet Lucky as a bored GI, persuaded by a mischievous friend to impersonate Benny Goodman, the jazz legend whom he vaguely resembles and has half the clarinet talent of. The deception causes Lucky to meet Valia, the woman who will be his wife, and an Englishman, Ian Asquith.

In 2002, unemployed journalist Emily, her marriage and sense of self broken, pitches a story about the Lucky's restaurant chain. It is accepted by the New York Times and she travels from London to Sydney to meet Lucky and report on the aftermath of the hideous crime that put the final nail in the coffin of the restaurant chain. Ian Asquith was her father.

The plot, like a fragrant stifado, thickens. This is a novel with many threads, each of them fraying, tying, knotting and falling apart. Lucky is lucky, and ferociously unlucky. Peripheral personalities are influential (Valia's father, Achilles, is bizarre, violent, wildly entertaining) and because of Lucky's inherent goodness he is played, envied, betrayed and, sometimes, loved.

This is a life story of a many faceted character, a man of schemes and ideas with a singular naivety. The dialogue is sharp and funny, characters saying what they mean whilst desperately concealing old wounds and truths that could cause fresh ones.

Lucky's is a madcap, wholly unusual story in which fiction is as strange as truth. Its plot twists floor the characters like dominoes only for life to set them up for another go. I finished this story with a sigh. I miss Lucky already.