Vulnerable in Hearts

February 13, 2006
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 (Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose
), 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.