The Cardturner

Seeing as how he's my favorite writer, I was really excited to read Louis Sachar's new book, The Cardturner. My wife even ordered it for me in advance and I eagerly awaited its arrival for several weeks. To my disappointment, the book was not all I'd hoped for. Don't get me wrong, it's still quite good, but it doesn't measure up to some of Sachar's other classics like Holes or the Wayside School books. For the most part, it follows a somewhat conventional plot structure, something that Sachar has often successfully avoided.
The story is about a teenager named Alton Richards who gets roped into being the "cardturner" for his bridge-obsessed, blind uncle. Alton's parents want him to make a good impression on the old man because he is extremely wealthy and they'd like to be included in his will, although they never directly say that. This part is responsible for a lot of the humor in the book, which is successful most the time. In my opinion, Sachar has always been able to deliver the laughs.
As he gets to know his uncle better, Alton also learns more about himself and his family history. He also learns some new things from his eccentric uncle. You get the idea.
The story focuses a lot on the card game bridge, something I know next to nothing about. I like that Sachar chose to write about something so unhip and uncool. As I read in an interview with him, every other teen author right now is writing about vampires so writing about an ancient card game for old people is like career suicide. Well, he didn't quite use those words, but something like that anyway. And I agree, at this time when it seems that every author is writing the same stories, it's refreshing to find a story with no pretensions and no attempts to be trendy or cool. My problem was that I just felt like Sachar didn't reach his potential. To borrow an analogy my friend once used, The Cardturner is like vanilla ice cream: it's good because it's ice cream, but it lacks something and fails to reach its full potential of awesomeness.