The Solitaire Mystery

Friday night, Dave opened a new book. Monday morning, he closed it again, finished.

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder.

A strange little book, with a plot that was truely bizarre.

The book is writen from the view of Hans Thomas, a boy whose mother left him 8 years ago. Hans and his father discover the mother is now a famous model in Athens and they decide to drive across Europe to find her and bring her back.

Along the way, they ask a dwarf for directions. He gives Hans a magnifying glass and points the pair in the direction of the village Dorf. There the magnifying glass comes in handy, when a nice old baker gives Hans an incredibly small book, which he conceals in a sticky-bun. For the remainder of the journey, Hans reads the small book whenever possible. It contains a wonderous story of a magical Island, filled with a pack of cards that had come alive in dwarf form, goldfish and the greatest drink ever created, Rainbow Fizz. It also contains a prophecy from 150 years ago which predicts the life of Hans with frightening accuracy.

Unlike most novels, however, the plot itself was of little real importance. Jostein Gaarder, before becoming a world famous novellist, taught high school philosophy and contributed to several textbooks on philosophy and theology. Not surprisingly therefore, the real focus of the book was it's philosophic discussions. The plot was simply a pleasent background to which to set the discussions around. It discussed everything from the meaning of life to the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Dave couldn't get enough.

Hans father tells Hans to imagine a planet filled with intelligent life forms. Life forms who could walk, talk, build houses, create complex machinary. Undoubtibly, the discovery of such a planet would be the most sensational scientific discovery the world had ever known. But such a planet HAS been discovered. It's called "Earth".

Why do we fail to amaze ourselves?

The Conjuror's Bird

Historical Fact: In an expedition to the South Seas in 1774 a new type of bird was found in Ulieta. One speciman of this bird was collected. It was described in some notes, drawn in detail and taken to England. Since it was a rather plain looking bird it was given little further interest.
It became interesting later, because no other speciman of this bird was ever found anywhere, living or dead. To add to this, the original speciman disappeared without a trace. Only the notes and the picture, along with other accounts of people who saw the speciman back then, remain to prove it had ever existed.

Given this fact, The Conjuror's Bird almost writes itself. Indeed, although it follows a fictional character, John Fitzgerald, and his quest to discover what has happened to the bird, being helped and hampered by other fictional character's, this fictional John actually does all the things the real life author Martin Davies had to do to find out as much as he could about this bird.

Only the ending of the book really deviates from real life, although even this is subtle enough to leave the reader thinking maybe, just maybe.

A well researched, well written all round pleasent read.

Well done Martin.