Review of The Cardturner by Louis Sachar

The subtitle of this book is: A Novel About a King, a Queen, and a Joker.  As I’m sure you know, Louis Sachar is the author of Holes, its sequel Small Steps, and the old favorite Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  The Cardturner is such a different kind of book, and I kept forgetting who the author of what I was reading was –it felt more like a Chris Crutcher book (Whale Talk, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes).  Even if you don’t think you’ll like reading about the game of bridge (Do most kids even know what that is?  My son and I once tried to learn to play by following an instruction book –it’s complicated!), you should give it a try.  The author alerts you to the passages that include detailed bridge talk by preceding them with a drawing of a whale (you’ll find out the significance of this if you read the book) so that you can skip over them if you want to.  I always felt too guilty to skip them, even though after a certain point I don’t think I absorbed too much of it.  During the summer before Alton’s senior year of high school, he is forced by his parents to drive his wealthy great-uncle Lester to his bridge club 4 times a week and be his cardturner (Uncle Lester, in addition to being wealthy, is blind).  Alton doesn’t really know his uncle or the game of bridge, but his parents have been trying to get him to suck up to his uncle for years, in the hope that he will leave them his fortune.  Despite his intentions of despising this duty, and Uncle Lester’s treating him like an idiot, Alton becomes intrigued with the game of bridge.  It helps (or doesn’t help) that he meets and is attracted to Toni Castaneda, who his only previous contact with was when he was 6 years old and she ran up to him at his uncle’s 65th birthday party, covered her ears and yelled, “Shut up!  Leave me alone!” and then ran away.  I found The Cardturned to be a pageturner (sorry, I couldn’t help it) and very funny.  Review by Stacy Church