Louis Sachar - The Cardturner: A Novel About a King, a Queen, and a Joker

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. Its 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 ones going to want to read a book about bridge! they told me on more than one occasion.

Still, I really love the game.

Ever since I was a little kid, Ive 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, Id say.

Tell him hes your favorite uncle.

Youre 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. Id say things like Hey, hows it goin? and hed 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 mothers favorite uncle long before he was mine.

I didnt 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 wouldnt 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 Youre 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.

Im 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.

Uncle Lester has taken a turn for the worse. Thats a phrase I heard a lot around the first of this year. Another phrase that came up a lot was complications resulting from diabetes.

I wish I could report that these words brought great concern and sadness to our household. True, when my mother spoke of our favorite uncles unfortunate turn, her voice had a somber tone, and sometimes she would place a hand on her heart, but I would say the overall mood was one of anxious anticipation. Once, I actually saw my father rub his hands together when he mentioned that Uncle Lester was not long for this world. December 25 might have come and gone, but there was a sense that Christmas was still just around the corner.

To be fair, I should mention that my father worked for a company that manufactured and installed insulation material. He often complained how the synthetic fibers made his hands itch, and that could have been the reason he was rubbing his hands together.

Nevertheless, the only person who seemed genuinely worried about our favorite uncle was my sister, Leslie. She was also the only one of us who had never met him, unless you count his sixty-fifth birthday party. She was about four months old when we went to his dark castle on the mountain. My mother put extra emphasis on the first syllable of my sisters name when she introduced Uncle Lester to his new grandniece, Leslie.

Leslie was eleven when Uncle Lester took his turn for the worse.

Whats diabetes? she asked me.

Its kind of a disease, I answered. It has something to do with your body not being able to turn sugar into insulin.

Why do you need insulin?

I didnt know.

Is Uncle Lester in pain?

Complications-resulting-from-diabetes was just a string of words to me, and I never gave much thought to their meaning. Unlike me, Leslie could feel the suffering behind the words.

A week later I found out just how complicated his condition was. My uncle Lester had become blind.

I guess he wont be playing cards anymore, my father said, rather callously, I thought.

It was the first time Id ever heard anything about my uncle and cards.

According to my mother, we were Uncle Lesters closest living relatives. By this, I think she meant we lived the closest, which I doubted had any legal significance, but she seemed to think this was important if, God forbid, anything should happen to him.

He had no children of his own. He had one brother and two sisters, and they all had children (including my mother), and their children had children (including Leslie and me).

That was a lot of people with whom to split any inheritance, but my mother seemed especially concerned about Mrs. Mahoney, Uncle Lesters longtime housekeeper. I think theres more going on there than just housekeeping, if you know what I mean, she said one evening during dinner.