Cardturner book review

 Cardturner Book Review

  Alton Richards,  a 17  year old   junior has been taught his   whole life that Uncle  Lester is his  favorite uncle  despite  only having  met the  man once. His uncle is   blind and nearing his  death and when he asks Alton to be his cardturner for bridge, Alton is forced  to  go and is told   “ not to screw it up.” Despite  not knowing a thing about bridge, he starts to learn the rules of   bridge and he grows fonder of  his uncle.

 Alton’s  job as a cardturner  is to tell his uncle the cards  he has  and to do whatever his uncle says. His uncle treats   him as  an idiot who   doesn’t understand  anything about Bridge. Despite  that,  Uncle Lester starts to have conversations with him about his life, his theories and occasionally bridge. Through these conversations, we learn that   Uncle Lester is not that bad. The thing I liked   about Uncle Lester  was that  he was harsh  but when he gave  someone a compliment, even if it was just a “well played.”,  that compliment was important.

 Alton  Richards  is    a very  witty character and despite what  his uncle thinks, he’s also pretty smart. Before, he went to  bridge, Alton  surrounded  himself with negative people such as his ex-girlfriend, Kate and his best-friend Cliff. That all changes when  he  goes to bridge and   he meets some very  interesting people who are older than him and a very interesting girl who is the same  age as him; Toni. I think all these  people shape  Alton  so that he becomes a better  person.

  I really liked the   different back-stories of the characters and I  found it really   funny, how Alton’s  family was obsessed with Uncle Lester’s  money. I  also really love how Louis Sachar incorporated a little bit of   of a supernatural  element  towards the end of the book.

 I did  find the parts about  bridge   dragged on but I did learn a  little bit about  bridge. I think  it was smart to put  a little warning  everytime Alton tried to explain Bridge and then a little  summary box at the end of the explaination. Cardturner   is one of those books, that I feel  Louis Sachar for himself and he just happened to share it with everyone else in case someone else wanted to read it.

 Overall I really enjoyed  it and have it a 4/5 stars on Goodreads