The Dice Man

Luke Rhinehart

Average Rating 9/10 (1 Review)

The cult classic that can still change your life... Let the dice decide! This is the philosophy that changes the life of bored psychiatrist Luke Rhinehart - and in some ways changes the world as well. Because once you hand over your life to the dice, anything can happen. Entertaining, humorous, scary, shocking, subversive, The Dice Man is one of the cult bestsellers of our time.

Review by Joanne (080309) Rating (9/10)

Review by Joanne
Rating 9/10
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; or rather the humdrum grind of life makes Luke Rhinehart, Doctor of Psychiatry and ‘Diceman’, go insane. In his search for a more gratifying existence Dr Rhinehart stumbles across what he calls ‘Diceplay’ which spices things up in his schedule ridden days. Every decision he makes becomes exclusively dependant upon the roll of a dice and from here the reader follows his life as he shakes it up and incorporates ‘Diceplay’ into a Psychological study.

Reading is my single true love; it always has been and will be for all eternity. At present I reside in a hostel for young persons so it can often be tricky to get hold of literature. One of my close acquaintances brought The Dice Man over for me to read and introduced it as ‘slow going for the initial seventy pages’. My companion is exceptionally intellectual, so with this as my preliminary impression things were not boding well for the paperback I found staring up at me from my single bed that I carve up every night with my comrade in sleeplessness; Insomnia.

I figured that I may as well provide the book with a chance, if it indisputably was as lacklustre as I had been told; perhaps I could in fact hit upon something far superior to sleeping tablets to knock myself out with. Unfortunately, slow is not quite the word I would utilize to describe Luke Rhinehart’s book. I found it to be vastly sharp in plot, magnificently worded and utterly impossible to set down. My post-it-notes suffered to the highest degree as I wrote things down that I felt were worthy of my consideration time after time, my Rizlas also vanished as I marked certain pages in a bookmark fashion and Insomnia was significantly satisfied by my overall deficiency of kip. The taste buds of my humour were treated to palatable and vibrant scintillating wittiness, my aptitude was put to the test by the nomadic thoughts and breathtaking language I found concealed; sandwiched between the sheets of paper and I rediscovered why I fell in love with language at the genesis of my reading lifetime.

The cover bears the brag ‘Few novels can change your life. This one will’ and with good reason; this book will! I emerged from the ‘Diceman’ experience searching desperately for a dice, which even in my hostel I managed to get my grubby little fingers on! Everything became new and more exciting with the dice dictating my life. I had to be careful lest I allow the dice to take over completely, I challenge anyone to read this book and not be taken in by ‘Diceplay’. I can confirm myself to be a fully fledged, seemingly irrational and quite crazy ‘Dicegirl’!
Joanne (8th March 2009)