A Fairy Tale For Adults

The blurb describes The Solitaire Mystery as a modern day fairy tale readers will never forget, A delightful hybrid between Reobert Pirsigs Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Michael Endes The Neverending Story. Certainly none of this is an exaggeration. Jostein Gaarder, who was a philosophy professor in Oslo before he became a novelist, has managed to weave a truly enchanting tale which at the same time gives us some profound insights into life.

Just as Alice blunders through Wonderland, we are led into the Solitaire Island where a pack of cards have come mysteriously alive and here too there are several Mad Hatterish characters doing quixotic things the diamond girls who keep bursting into tears, the hotheaded joker in the pack. It is a charming, whimsical little story, one that is bound to appeal to young and old alike. The young will feel a lot wiser after reading the book and the old will surely begin to look at things with a fresh youthful gaze.

 

The tale begins when twelve year old Hans Thomas and his father set out from the Norwegian shipping town of Arendal in search of his mother who has run away from home some eight years ago trying to find herself. The drive from Norway to Greece is peppered with many interesting philosophical discussions about God, his creations, life on earth, between father and son. Although insightful, the discussion is always lively and amusing as the father always spins humorous examples to illustrate his argument. For instance, talking about the existence of God, he tells Hans the joke about the astronaut and the brain surgeon. The astronaut boasts how he has been all over space but never has he espied any angels. The brain surgeon retorts how he has cut up many peoples heads but never encountered any thoughts. The journey is also in many ways an amusing travelogue as IIans describes the many European towns he passes through with childish wonder. We also treated to a mini history lesson.

En route to Athens, the duo are forced into the little Swiss town of Dorf by a midget, manning a gas station on the highway. At Dorf, the young boy encounters and old baker who gives him a miniature book hidden in a sticky bun. The sticky bun book is the memoir of a sailor shipwrecked on a mysterious uninhabited island. The sailor, Frode, whiles away his time with a pack of cards, playing solitaire until one of the cards comes miraculously alive. For a while, its an idyllic existence on the island as the fifty member family of clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades go about their business unthinkingly. Everything is neatly regimented until in strides the joker in the pack. A meddlesome little troublemaker, the jester asks too many questions and is keen to find out who his creator is.

As IIans reads about Frodes Solitaire Island, he finds parallels in his own journey to Athens. Hans knows that his father is a bit like the joker in the pack, always questioning, trying to understand the meaning of life. And isnt his mother like the Acc of Hearts, who is forever getting lost, trying to find her true self? In many ways both Frodes journey and Hans journey is the very quest for the meaning of life. There are other similarities too and many mysteries to be solved on the way. Gaarder lays all his cards on the table. It is for the reader to pick up the clues and find out for themselves what a wonderful fairy tale our world itself is.

Originally written in Norwegian, the book has been translated into English. But unless you read the fact that it is a translation you will never realise it, so delightful is the language and compelling the narrative. A must read.

Originally written in Norwegian, the book has been translated into English. But unless you read the fact that it is a

translation you will never realise it, so delightful is the language and compelling the narrative.

The Solitaire Mystery

Jostein Gaarder Berkeley International Edition/Distributed by IBD Rs 198.80/349 pages