The Cardturner

Title: The Cardturner
Author: Louis Sachar
Type: Young Adult
Genre: Fiction
Rating: Four out of five stars.

Summary: Alton Richards, seventeen, is in a bad place. His girlfriend dumped him for his best friend. He doesn't have a job. His car is a piece of crap. In general, he's just slogging through life. His blind great uncle, who is very wealthy and not very friendly, is an avid bridge player, and asks that Alton come and be his card turner while he plays. This means that he would put down all the cards for his uncle and read him the cards that were in his hand.
Alton agrees, at the behest of his mother. His parents demand he find out if they're included in the will (as Trapp is very ill with diabetes). Alton just wants to get over his heartbreak.

This was a really interesting read. I picked it up because I love Louis Sachar. I have ever since I was in fourth grade and my teacher read Sideways Stories from Wayside school.

In a way, it was pretty surprising. I find that Sachar always includes some kind of surreal element in all his novels. And while that did hold true in this, it wasn't quite so obvious as it has been in his other novels. The characters did not just accept that something strange was happening to them, they commented and were even afraid of it.

I really liked the character of Toni Castaneda, who comes from the family that Alton's mother is afraid will take Uncle Trapp's fortune from them. She (Toni) was previously Trapp's card turner. They had a falling out when he told her to make a play and she asked; "Are you sure?" You have to understand that Trapp was a magnificent card player, even making it to the national championships. He didn't like to be second guessed.

I found Toni to be the most honest character in the whole novel. Though she is supposed to be mentally ill, it was refreshing to find someone who wasn't cutting themselves, slumping around in a depression, or locked up. I get tired of that happening in stories with someone who is supposed to be crazy.

I only gave this four out of five stars for two reasons. One; while I appreciated Louis Sachar including chunks of the book that explained bridge (which I had barely heard of and certainly never knew anything about) I found it dragged. I had to read the sections that explained the rules two or three times to even KIND OF understand the plot points that relied on that.

Two; I thought that Alton, that narrator of the story, was whiney about the same things. His girlfriend dumped him. He never shut up about her going out with his best friend. I understand that it was part of the story, but I don't understand exactly how it happened, which was probably the most frustrating party. All you know is that Katie broke up with Alton for Cliff and they're dating and see each other a lot, and Cliff and Alton are best friends. But who really enticed whom? (It IS hinted that Cliff did it, because he ended up also dating Toni, who Alton was attracted to.) But I kind of wanted it spelled out so I understood the whole picture. I was also frustrated that Alton never told his parents how brilliant Trapp really was, or told them to lay off about his millions of dollars.

I did appreciate the different layers to the story. It wasn't just about Alton and Trapp, it was about Trapp and Alton coming to move forward through what he was letting drag him down.

However, I feel that I should mention that this is no Holes. Don't come to this book looking for that kind of story. It is a great read, and I do recommend it highly!