The Cardturner

by Louis Sachar Narrated by Louis Sachar

Overview

How are we supposed to be partners?
He can't see the cards and I don't know the rules!

The summer after junior year of high school looks bleak for Alton Richards. His girlfriend has dumped him to hook up with his best friend. He has no money and no job. His parents insist that he drive his great-uncle Lester to his bridge club four times a week and be his cardturner-whatever that means. Alton's uncle is old, blind, very sick, and very rich.
***********
But Alton's parents aren't the only ones trying to worm their way into Lester Trapp's good graces. They're in competition with his longtime housekeeper, his alluring young nurse, and the crazy Castaneda family, who seem to have a mysterious influence over him. Alton soon finds himself intrigued by his uncle, by the game of bridge, and especially by the pretty and shy Toni Castaneda. As the summer goes on, he struggles to figure out what it all means, and ultimately to figure out the meaning of his own life.

Editorial Reviews

SEPTEMBER 2010 - AudioFile

Louis Sachar is an enchanting writer and a charming reader. At his parents’ insistence, 17-year-old Alton is spending the summer as his blind, rich bridge-playing Uncle Lester’s cardturner. This means driving him to his club four times a week and inadvertently learning some things—about bridge and about his family history. Since the story is narrated by Alton, Sachar performs the entire novel in the droll, jaded, doubtful tones of a teenage boy feeling his way in new territory. A foghorn sound effect amusingly announces impending long-winded bridge explanations, but the bridge playing is woven so masterfully into the story that even the most uninterested listener will learn a thing or two about the game. K.O. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Mary Quattlebaum

…Sachar handles complicated narrative structures with a light, sure touch, as he did in his brilliant Holes. This new novel deftly threads bridge diagrams and philosophical ideas through the short chapters of a coming-of-age story. And readers needn't be card sharks to enjoy the book. They can choose to wend through carefully marked descriptions of the characters' bridge play or skip them entirely and stick to the basic story line. Either way leads straight to Alton's quiet heart and his developing desire to become his own cardturner in the big game of life.
—The Washington Post

Kirkus Reviews

Who wants to read a novel about playing bridge-a dull, old-fashioned game nobody plays anymore, some old person's idea of fun before there were cell phones, television, iPods and video games? That's what 17-year-old Alton Richards thinks about bridge when he gets a job as cardturner for his diabetic, blind and curmudgeonly (and fabulously rich) Uncle Lester Trapp, a bridge master. In a journey into the culture of bridge and its alien rules and language, Alton comes to see the extraordinary in Trapp and to consider such new ideas as perception, synchronicity, randomness and the subconscious. Alton's first-person voice is the right vehicle for taking readers into this world and delineating how Alton is changed by the newfound relationship with his uncle and sort-of cousin Toni. Readers need not be card sharks to appreciate this unusual story; in fact, they will soon realize they've been dealt more than cards in this narrative of how big ideas and unforgettable characters affect Alton as he learns to take charge of his life and play his own hand. Intelligent readers will love this work-it's in the cards. (appendix) (Fiction. 12 & up)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171989941
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	05/11/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

Read an Excerpt

1    
My Favorite Uncle    

Ever since I was a little kid, I've had it drilled into me that my uncle Lester was my favorite uncle. My mother would thrust the phone at me and say, "Uncle Lester wants to talk to you," her voice infused with the same forced enthusiasm she used to describe the deliciousness of canned peas. "Tell him you love him."  

"I love you, Uncle Lester," I'd say.  

"Tell him he's your favorite uncle."  

"You're my favorite uncle."  

It got worse as I got older. I never knew what to say to him, and he never seemed all that interested in talking to me. When I became a teenager I felt silly telling him he was my favorite uncle, although my mother still urged me to do so. I'd say things like "Hey, how's it goin'?" and he'd grunt some response. He might ask me a question about school. I imagine it was a great relief to both of us when my mother took back the phone. Our brief conversations always left me feeling embarrassed, and just a little bit creepy.  

He was actually my great-uncle, having been my mother's favorite uncle long before he was mine.  

I didn't know how much money he had, but he was rich enough that he never had to be nice to anyone. Our favorite uncle never visited us, and I think my mother initiated all the phone conversations with him. Later, after he got really sick, he wouldn't even talk to her. My mother would call almost daily, but she could never get past his housekeeper.   I had only met Uncle Lester face to face one time, at his sixty-fifth birthday party. I was six years old, and to me, his house seemed like a castle on a mountaintop. I said the obligatory "Happy birthday" and "I love you" and "You're my favorite uncle" and then steered clear of him.  

"His heart is as cold as a brick," my father said on the drive home.  

That phrase has stuck with me, I think, because my father used the word cold instead of hard.  

My elementary school was a brick building. Every day on the way home, I would drag my fingers over the hard, and yes, cold surface.  

I'm in high school now, but still whenever I walk by a brick building, I feel compelled to touch it. Even now, as I write this, I can almost feel the hard coolness, the sharp edges, and the roughness of the cement between the bricks.

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