The Cardturner
Authors: Louis Sachar
THE
CARDTURNER
ALSO BY Louis Sachar
Holes
Small Steps
Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake
Dogs Don't Tell Jokes
The Boy Who Lost His Face
There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York
First published in Great Britain in June 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
First published in the USA in May 2010 by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House Inc., New York
This electronic edition published in June 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Louis Sachar 2010
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
The publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:
Lines from
Cannery Row
by John Steinbeck – Penguin Modern Classics New Edition, ed. Susan Shillingford, published in Great Britain in 2000 by Penguin Books, page 107 lines 7-11, copyright 1945 by John Steinbeck. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
Bye Bye Blackbird
– Words by Mort Dixon/Music by Ray Henderson – © 1926 (Renewed) Ray Henderson Music Corp., Old Clover Leaf Music, Redwood Music Ltd. – All Rights Reserved – International Copyright Secured – Lyric reproduction by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd.
Bye Bye Blackbird
– Words and music by Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon © 1926, reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW
Bye Bye Blackbird
– Words and music by Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon © 1926, reproduced by permission of Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London W8 4EP
All rights reserved
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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 1243 3
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To Nancy Joe, Nancy Jo Gordy, Marilou Powell, Paul and Beth Tobias,
Jerry Bigler, Claudette Hartman, Alex Kolesnik, and Ruth Sachar.
It's been a joy sitting across the table from you
(even if a bit trying at times),
and to all my friends at the Austin Bridge Center,
opponents and partners alike,
and to anyone, anywhere, who is struggling to figure out
whether a bid of four clubs is Gerber or natural . . .
Table of Contents
16 The Milkman and the Senator's Wife
20 Toni Castaneda
28 Toni's Grandmother and President Nixon
37 Trapp's Closest Living Relatives
50 Ducking Smoothly
Imagine you were abducted by aliens and taken away to their home planet. After living there awhile, you learn to speak their language, and then actually become a pretty well-known author. You were a huge baseball fan back on Earth, so you decide to write a book about baseball. You know that none of your alien readers have ever heard of baseball, but you think it will make a great story, and besides, you really love the game. . . .
As you attempt to write it, you quickly find yourself entangled in words with multiple meanings, like
ball
and
run
. When you try to describe a triple play, you get so bogged down explaining the rules about force-outs that the excitement of the play itself is lost.
That was the predicament I put myself into when I wrote
The Cardturner
. It's not about baseball but about bridge, a card game that was once extremely popular but that, unfortunately, not too many people play anymore, especially not young people. In fact, the people who do play bridge seem to live in their own alien world.
My publisher, my editor, my wife, and my agent all said I was crazy. "No one's going to want to read a book about bridge!" they told me on more than one occasion.
Still, I really love the game. . . .
THE
CARDTURNER
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.