Book Description

Set in the raw, Victorian world of the Five Towns, The Card tells the extremely funny and tangled story of Denry Machin's rise from mediocrity to fame through a series of ludicrous and yet perversely successful schemes.

He dances, pleads, cheats and inspires his way through life in a series of set-pieces which wonderfully evoke a now long-gone world of civic balls, seaside excursions, newspaper boys and patent chocolate remedies.

As everybody said after one of his most stylish coups, Denry was not simply a card; he was the card.