The Cardturner, by Louis Sachar

****

An excerpt from a new review posted on Children's Books and Reviews:

The subjective appeal of a novel like this is not always immediately obvious. There are no dragons here; no princesses to be rescued or aliens to be annihilated. There are no vampires or werewolves or scrappy teens fighting for their lives. There isn’t even much teenage angst or romantic drama. Alton is just an ordinary boy living an ordinary life. Fortunately, Louis Sachar is not an ordinary writer. With the same flair for storytelling that won him such acclaim in Holes, he creates characters we care about and makes their relatively uneventful lives interesting. Don’t get me wrong—the story is perfectly acceptable. But it is the skill of the storyteller that really makes this book. [...] 

A book about a boy who spends his summer playing cards with old people might not seem like bestseller material. And indeed, it is unlikely to become one. There is nothing here to seize the public consciousness with quite the frenetic fever (and fervor) that tends to accompany modern bestsellers. This is, quite simply, a really good book. And given the subject matter, this is itself a testament to Sachar’s ability as a writer.

Full review available here.