Martha Frankel

Hats & Eyeglasses

A soft-pedaling memoir by journalist Frankel fondly recalls growing up in the Bronx and Queens, N.Y., learning to play poker from her dad and uncles, which would later become her obsession. As a kid, Frankel absorbed the numbers-canny ways of her relatives, who doled out gambling advice such as the reference in the title to a ship’s sinking, leaving only hats and eyeglasses floating on the surface. With the death of her beloved father, known as the Pencil because he was a CPA, Frankel’s big dreams deflated and she largely drifted through school, a first marriage and drug use, before meeting woodworker Steve. She moved to Woodstock, N.Y., and, through friends, began writing celebrity interviews for magazines like Details. An idea for writing a screenplay about a poker player brought her into close contact with her ex-con cousin Keith, who had taught her how to play. From regular Wednesday night poker games with her friend Sal’s group of hard-pickled males, where she learned how not to play like a girl, to an all-poker cruise to casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., and L.A., she gravitated to playing online, which enthralled her—and emptied her bank account. As she explains in this frank and unaffected memoir, shame brought her back to her family and closer to her mother.

[This] Honest, funny betting memoir rises to the top… Frankel’s lively storytelling allows her to turn her own crapola into a winner. — USA Today

In five minutes you will feel not only as if you have known [Martha] all your life, but as if you still have one of her sweaters. — The New York Times

Intimate, exuberant — O, The Oprah Magazine

Sparse and honest writing — The Associated Press

Fast-paced and amazingly funny — New Orleans Times-Picayune

[A] frank and unaffected memoir — Publishers Weekly

Fearless… powerful, even uplifting and funny — The New York Post

Fun and full of life. I’ve known Martha Frankel for twenty years and Hats & Eyeglasses was still surprising. A wonderful book. — Jane Smiley
author of Ten Days in the Hills and A Year at the Races

A bluntly honest memoir of gambling addiction-harrowing, funny, and compulsively readable, straight through to the end. — John Berendt
author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The City of Falling Angels

Hats & Eyeglasses is a hamische tour de force. With a warm voice and a light touch, Martha Frankel’s account of growing up with gambling pays off, big-time. My bet is on her as she both enshrines and kicks her compulsion. Entertaining and enlightening, this is a must for memoir addicts, and a fine debut for the author. — Laura Shaine Cunningham
author of Sleeping Arrangements and Beautiful Bodies