December 16, 2014
Many sports fans are guilty of "coaching from the stands" (or their couches). They see an unsuccessful play, and they know exactly what should have been done, or who should be sent in. It's ludicrous, of course, that some fatass who only made JV back in high school would think he knows more about football than an experienced coach. Parents of young athletes can be very bad about this, too, but there's a lot of bias going on there.
Anyway, I've noticed that I have a tendency to "write from the bleachers" when I am dissatisfied with a book. I consider what might have been done differently to make the story more effective. Now, I'm not saying that I know better than published, sometimes award-winning authors, but in my defense it's a bit different from coaching from the couch. Coaches have to make snap judgements in the heat of the moment; authors are supposed to reflect on and edit their work. So when I find myself picking apart a book, it makes me think that it wasn't written with care.
The book had its good points, of course. All the explanations for bridge (the card game) were really fucking confusing, and I still have very little idea how to play it. But I have a better idea of it then, say, the dumb-dumbs on How I Met Your Mother. It's a very complex game! I actually want to get a better grasp on how to play it, so I bought a deck of cards and am gonna walk myself through some basic instructions I found on the Internet. Bridge is typically viewed as an "old people game," but it must be the smart old people who are playing it. If Sachar's goal was to get younger people interested in bridge, he may have one convert right here.
I liked that Alton, the teenage narrator, got into the excitement of bridge while assisting his blind great uncle as his cardturner. I like card games, too. I swear to God, I'm 27 going on 88. But Alton's not the only younger person who gets into it; he describes playing against hipsters around my age at a tournament. I'm curious to see the extent that bridge is catching on with my generation.
Other than his earnest interest in bridge, and his descriptions of his horrible parents, Alton is such an Everyman...or Everyboy, rather. His character doesn't have much of a personality, and his other conflicts don't even seem like such. He doesn't have any real problems. The girl troubles seem minor...in fact, whatever happened to Katie, Alton's ex who was dating his best friend Cliff but got brushed aside when Cliff met Toni? That had started out as a secondary plot, but never really got resolved. Even when Alton himself began dating Toni (of course), his half-hearted falling out with Cliff was like...nothing. They just weren't as close any more, the end.
I have a problem with Toni's "mental illness." See, she's diagnosed as schizophrenic because she hears her grandmother (dead long before her birth) talking to her. It's highly probable that Toni would have a mental illness; her grandfather, Senator King, was definitely batshit. See, his little wife Annabel was a great bridge player, and her partner was Trapp, Alton's great uncle (not blind at the time). Trapp loved Annabel, but of course they were only bridge partners. Still, King was insanely jealous, and had his wife committed after she snuck off to Chicago to play in a tournament with Trapp. She was kept isolated for a few years before killing herself.
Trapp's story, and his later relationship with Sophie and Toni, Annabel's daughter and granddaughter, was interesting. He's a great character. I wish so much that the story were from his perspective, but that would go against the conventions of YA literature. Anyway, he dies right before he's set to go with Alton and his current partner to another tournament.
I was mostly enjoying the story up to this point. But that's when it went downhill. Toni reveals that she actually does hear her grandmother's ghost, and Alton believes her because he starts to hear Trapp, too. Oh, brother. Why was this necessary? Sachar's works often include fantastic elements. In, say, Holes, this works because that story is full of fantastic elements. It just fits. Here, in a story otherwise so realistic, it felt sloppy and out of place. Why couldn't Alton and Toni play in Chicago in honor of their relatives? Maybe Teodora could have put the idea into Alton's head and given him the tickets that Trapp already printed. They didn't have to win or anything. Because the sad truth is, people don't get a chance to be ghosts and fulfill what they regretted not doing or whatever.
Obviously I wasn't super impressed with this book. But at the very least, it got me to consider a new hobby.
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