A Novel About a King, a Queen, and a Joker
by Louis Sachar
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had it drilled into me that my uncle Lester was my favorite uncle.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

This book is about bridge. The game. I know squat about bridge (except for that it’s a card game), and yet I found myself fascinated by this book. Sure, it helps that it’s written by Louis Sachar, and it helps that our main character, Alton, is quite likable, and it helps that there’s more to it than bridge, but really: the book is about bridge. There’s no getting around it. There’s bridge terms, and lots and lots of descriptions about bridge games, and at first you won’t get it, but by the end you’ll want to play a hand or to, just to see what everyone is talking about.

Seventeen-year-old Alton is not exactly what you’d call an overachiever. He was going to get a summer job — really — but then an opportunity fell in his lap: his great-uncle Lester Trapp is a bridge player, but he’s blind. He needs someone to sit with him and let him know what the cards are and then play the cards he tells him to. It’s an easy job; not fun, but easy. Except, after a while hanging around Trapp and the game, Alton begins to realize something: it interesting. It’s intriguing. And what if — 40 years after he last tried — Trapp could win a national championship? Of course, there’s some bumps along the way (not to mention a breakdown, death, a romance, and a little bit of underhandedness), but it all manages to work out in the end, for the best. Call it fate, or call it synchronicity, but it works.

It works, primarily, because of the narration. For starters, because Alton’s about as clueless at bridge as we are (I’m assuming you’re as clueless as I am), it helps that he stops and explains it as we go. Amazingly, it doesn’t halt the plot, but it’s woven into it almost pretty seamlessly. (It does stop it a little, but I was interested in it; Sachar does provide an out: you can skip the explanation sections and just read the summary box if you want.) It helps that Alton is a pretty genial kid; funny and self-deprecating, and yet somehow determined to win his great-uncle’s respect. You can’t help but root for a kid like that. It’s actually filled with likable characters (the only people I really didn’t like were Alton’s parents who were a bit too money-digging for my taste, but thankfully got marginalized as the book went on), which is one of the reasons it was a delight to read.

I enjoyed the book, and yet I wonder about its success: really, who’s going to want to read a book about bridge? Especially in the YA crowd. I’d recommend it, saying, “Trust me. Yes, it’s about a card game that no one really plays anymore, but it’s actually, surprisingly quite good.”

Promise.

by Delphine de Vigan
(Translated from the French by George Miller)
ages: 14+
First sentence: “‘Miss Bertignac, I don’t see your name on the list of presentations.'”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.

It started out as a school assignment. Lou, who’s the youngest in her class and who hates presentations, picked exploring why young women become homeless as her social economics class project. She decided to do some interviews, and as a result met No: 18 years old, and homeless for the past three years.

Over the course of the assignment, Lou develops a bond with No, and — mostly because of some difficulties in her own home life with her parents — takes No under her wing. She wants to help No, to make her life better, and so she invites No (with her amazingly trusting parents’ permission) to live with them. And for a while it really is better.

One of the things I liked best about this book was that it was unflinchingly honest. Without giving anything away: there isn’t a happy ending. No doesn’t “reform” and suddenly become a productive member of society. The book addresses the issue of homelessness (as well as rape, neglect, death and French welfare) without being maudlin, but also without talking down to the characters or the reader. It’s very matter-of-fact: these things happen. Sometimes we can help. Sometimes that help isn’t wanted. Sometimes it all doesn’t work out the way we want it to. But, don’t give up trying to help.

All that said, I’m not sure I quite connected with the book. While on an intellectual level, it was interesting and honest, none of the characters were terribly sympathetic. Lou is one of those precocious kids — uber smart and quirky — and while it works in this context, especially since she’s an idealist who is eventually jaded (the “growing up” process inevitably involves disappointment of some sort, because one cannot grow without it, I suppose), it’s not exactly endearing. There’s her parents: you feel sorry for them, but there’s not much else. There’s Lucas, Lou’s older friend (he’s been held back a couple of years, so they’re in the same class), and while he has the potential to be interesting, he’s never really given the chance. Then there’s No: wounded, yes, but also highly petulant, which made her unsympathetic. I wanted to feel sorry for her, and I did to a certain extent. But pity isn’t enough to make a character work.

And, like always happens when I read a book in translation, I had to wonder what I missed by reading it in English. I’m sure there were some subtleties, some peculiar Frenchisms, that may have made the book that much better for me that I missed by not being a native French speaker.

It’s a good book, an interesting book, but not a breathtaking book.