Pushing Pawns: The Chess Club Book One

The diverse, ragtag group of urban kids comprising a chess club at public school Q722 in New York are three decades too young to have any memories of the Cold War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. However, for the narrator of PUSHING PAWNS — gifted 14-year-old Moses Middleton — latter-day evaluation of socialism and the Red Scare are the background chatter of his left-leaning parents and grandparents while he and his teammates try (and fail) to excel at the game.

Fortunately, socialist sympathizers have interesting friends and connections, one of whom is Viktor Fleishmann, an elderly Soviet chess grandmaster who now spends frosty mornings in New York parks playing games and reading old papers written in Cyrillic. I imagine him as the type of man who never irons his pants and breaks the filters off American cigarettes, so they taste more like the ones he smoked in Novosibirsk when he was 12.

Readers can guess early where this story heads, but what separates it from being a typical hero’s journey with an eccentric mentor, or a clumsy Ayn Rand-like political missive, is Novak’s ingenious setup. Chess is not an allegory for the state of affairs between great nations. Rather, chess philosophy and playing style help explain the unique ways the two superpowers interpreted life and society in the late 20th century. It makes a powerful argument for the virtues of both.

These story elements are timely, with renewed interest in both chess (the Queens Gambit) and Soviet Russia (Chernobyl, the Americans), but if chess strategy and political allegory sound too heady for an engaging young adult read, fear not. Novak creates a fun, fast-paced, high-stakes narrative that requires no advance knowledge of either chess or the cold war. His game descriptions are masterful and exciting, even to the layperson. Soviet chess playing method becomes the ancient religion our heroes unearth to give them an advantage against a well-funded preparatory school. If that isn’t a great hook, I don’t know what is.

The universe of PUSHING PAWNS is one I’d like to inhabit, with characters I’d love to befriend. Middleton is mixed race but phenotypically black with hyper-educated parents — worth mentioning when so much literature expects black teen characters to be touched by gun violence and broken families. His friend Esther is a masterful violinist and sabreuse; P.D. is a gay Judd Nelson; and my favorite character, Zamir, is an Albanian immigrant with the sort of amazing tee shirts I know southeastern Europeans to wear.

Written during a time of extreme isolation, the concept of a gang of friends who support each other is appealing. It’s nice to crawl into a book where teens can hang out together, unmasked.

Novak’s use of expository dialogue and narrative occasionally feels a bit more “telly” rather than “showy,” but it’s fascinating enough to be forgivable. The only thing I wish might have been different — and this is a small quibble indeed — was the resolution of a subplot in which Mose’s friend Molly is vulnerable and in imminent danger of falling into the hands of a leering uncle. I won’t spoil how it shakes out, but I’d prefer if she had a little more agency. Hardly a dealbreaker.

All the best teen reads today are indie, and PUSHING PAWNS is no exception. Novak executes his story with a clear love of chess, a deft understanding of Soviet society, and a keen openness to reevaluating cold war history. Smart middle graders and young adults will enjoy the primary storyline, while aging GenXers will recall — and question — the world of their youth.

Don’t miss it. As clever as it is smart, Dima Novak’s PUSHING PAWNS twists a tale of public school chess competitions into a gratifying story of classism, teamwork, loyalty, friendship, and sweet, sweet revenge.

My son and I would have devoured this had it been available when he went through a period of near-obsession with chess. This is lively and unusual YA for smart kids - and adults.

The chess play is plausible and exciting, but should be no bar to readers who aren't especially interested in the game. The real draw is the characters: they're a diverse bunch of very smart kids who transcend the usual urban stereotypes. The narrative voice is uniquely endearing: the protag is like a contemporary urban Holden Caulfield, a funny, vulnerable dreamer.

You care about these kids and root for them as they struggle and triumph. Touching, funny, exciting, and ultimately rewarding.

Great writing here, wit and warmth and righteous anger, and more than that: sophisticated thinking, social awareness and practical-utopian dreams. Moses Middleton has perhaps not done justice to himself yet in his young life. Perhaps as he enters his freshman year in high school, he feels he hasn't been pushing himself to achieve, he hasn't been giving it his all to realize his potential, he has avoided challenges and chosen the paths of least resistance. When he starts his school chess club, it's another perhaps half assed effort to get something more than mediocre going in his neighborhood and his life. But little does he know, this club and the mission to which it eventually is pledged -- to show up the privileged douchebags of Galton Prep -- is going to take him deeper than he expected into the lives of others, into the politics of his time, into his own capacities and talents, and into the on deck circle of adulthood. And it's great great fun to be along for this ride. Moses' friends are vividly drawn and their friendships are real and evolving before our eyes -- into a one-for-all- and -all-for-one spirit. This would have been my favorite book as a kid, and I'm so happy to be able to give it to the kids I know for the holidays. But their parents are loving it too. A great choice for reading together. Can't wait for the sequel.