The Queen's Gambit

The Queen's Gambit is interesting; I like Beth's character and the writing style. I like how addiction is accurately portrayed, and am impressed with the authors ability to understand chess well enough to write this. I cannot picture chessboards in my head as clearly as Beth, though, so I mostly skimmed her descriptions of gameplay. Tevis touches on some important topics like feminism, racism, and class, but doesn't expand in any meaningful way...it's just there. The book doesn't have a real climax, everything feels the same the entire way through.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, regardless.

My main complaint, and something I'm glad the Netflix adaptation leaves out (Spoiler:) is the unusual and out of place sexual content in the beginning of the novel. She is a child. He writes of her sexual assault in gross detail, and then it has absolutely no impact on her or the book whatsoever. It ruins the character of Jolene, who she continues to idolize. He implies that Jolene and Fergussen have a relationship, when he is of college age and she is 13, ruining another character. It was just really gross and uncomfortable to read especially from an adult man's writing. Why was it included??