When Life Depends On Scrabble

A book review from The Wall Street Journal: When Life Depends On Scrabble
By MEGHAN COX GURDON
It is becoming almost routine that novelists for adults will turn, at some point, to writing for younger readers; yet seldom does a writer pull it off with as much grace and felicity as Meg Wolitzer does in "The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman" (Dutton, 294 pages, $16.99). In this lucid and pitch-perfect story for readers ages 8 to 14, the author of "The Uncoupling" and "The Ten-Year Nap" departs from gender politics and other grown-up obsessions for the equally obsessive but considerably more amusing world of competitive Scrabble.

Ms. Wolitzer takes us to the national Youth Scrabble Tournament in the company of three 12-year-olds: Duncan Dorfman, an outcast new kid who is trying to take care of his single mother and whose fingertips have lately developed curious powers; April Blunt, a girl yearning not only to win respect from her sports-fixated family but also to find a boy she met on vacation three years earlier; and Nate Saviano, a cool urban skateboarder under pressure from his father, a failed Scrabble champion, to bring home the trophy. With sparkling dialogue, ingenious anagrams, ethical dilemmas and a daub of mystery, Ms. Wolitzer has created a wonderfully well-structured story that will be (almost) as easily relished by Scrabble neophytes as it will by aficionados.