title: Vulnerable in Hearts: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Contract Bridge
author:  Sandy Balfour 
description: Auction, bid, contract. Dummy, insult, misfit. Sacrifice, slam, trump, vulnerability. Contract bridge boasts perhaps the most resonant terminology of any card game, and its complexity has entranced its fans for decades. As the title of this somber account suggests, its metaphorical resonances can be appropriate in a familial context, too. Born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, in 1926 (roughly coincident with the origins of contract bridge), Balfour's father, Tom, emigrated as a teenager to South Africa, where he later worked as an engineer. A stern figure, Tom saved his boldness for the bridge table. Sprinkling colorful anecdotes from and citing experts like Ely Culbertson, Milton Work, Alan Truscott and Zia Mahmood, Balfour plumbs the history of bridge for insight into his father's elusive makeup, his displacement from his beloved Scotland, his passion for Robert Louis Stevenson, his military service, his professional disappointments and his alcoholism (he died in 2003). The author of a memoir about cryptic crosswords (<i>Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose [8]</i>), Balfour has a knack for expressing his emotions in the jargon of arcane pastimes. While bridge may be forbidding for nonfanatics, the emotional heart of this memoir is not. <i>(Apr.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  Norman is the clever one of a close-knit Jewish family in the East End of
  London. Infant prodigy; brilliant barrister; the apple of his parent’s eyes…
  until at forty-one he becomes a drug addict, confined to his bedroom, at the
  mercy of his hallucinations and paranoia.
  
  
  For Norman, his committal to a mental hospital represents the ultimate act of
  betrayal. For Rabbi Zweck, Norman’s father, his son’s deterioration is a
  bitter reminder of his own guilt and failure.
  
  
  Only Bella, the unmarried sister, still in her childhood white ankle socks,
  can reach across the abyss of pain to bring father and son the elusive peace
  which they both desperately crave.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
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