Cardturner by Louis Sacher

The Cardturner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker by Louis Sachar

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The narrator sums the problem with this book up in this way: "So, here's the deal. Whenever you see the picture of the whale, it means I am going to go into some detail about bridge. If that makes you zone out, then just skip ahead to the summary box and I'll give you the short version." You truly need to do this. I didn't, and I thought exactly that: there is way too much detail about bridge. Truthfully, if you skipped all of the detail about bridge, the story would be very short. The essence of the story without all of the bridge detail is rather engaging. The narrator is the nephew of a rich, eccentric, and blind bridge player. He is recruited to be the card turner for his uncle's bridge games. There ends up being a little romance and a little mystery woven into the story that keeps you reading. At least it kept me reading, but I think my students would get bogged down in all of the bridge talk and put the book down. Novel idea, but not a really good novel.



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