One of fiction's greatest chancers - the story of Denry Machin and his
unceasing, ingenious efforts to become a great man
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.'