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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.82374
EAN num: 9780425159996
ISBN number: 042515999X
Label: Berkley Trade
Manufacturer: Berkley Trade
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: November 01, 1997
Publishing house: Berkley Trade
Sale Popularity Level: 242460
Studio: Berkley Trade
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Weaving an astonishingly original tapestry of tales from the viewpoint of a 12-year-old boy named Hans Thomas, The Solitaire Mystery takes readers on a universal search for fulfillment and the meaning of life.
Amazon.com Review:
Jostein Gaarder had an unlikely international sucess with Sophie's World, a novelized exploration of western philosophy through the eyes of a young girl. This is an earlier work, translated from the Norwegian by Sarah Jane Hails. This fable-like story dabbles in philosophy too, though more lightly. It tells of a Norwegian boy traveling across Europe with his calm and reflective father in search of his long lost mother. The boy finds a tiny manuscript that reveals the secret of a magic deck of cards that can tell the future.
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Rated by buyers 
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Jostein Gaarder proved himself to be a remarkable teacher of philosophy with his very first translated novel "Sophie's World", an imaginative trip through philosophers past and present. He brings his unique blend of fantasy and philosophy to "The Solitaire Mystery", a novel quicker in pace and slightly less dense than the more heavily academic "Sophie's World". It is a mystery filled with fantasy and fact as one family tries to reconcile itself with destiny.
The story begins with Hans Thomas and his father driving across Europe to Athens to reclaim Hans Thomas' mother who left them many years before. Along the way, Hans Thomas and his father philosophize about life and just how they are going to convice the woman they both love to come back home with them. The trip begins quite normally, until Hans Thomas encounters a midget at a gas station who gives him a tiny magnifying glass and tells them to stop in the town of Dorf. When they do so, Hans Thomas encounters a local baker with a secret he slowly shares with Hans Thomas, for he bakes an almost microscopic book inside of a sticky bun that tells the story of a fantastical magic island where life quite literally follows along the lines of a game of solitaire. But what does this mysterious story have to do with Hans Thomas and his father? The more he reads, and the closer the two get to Athens, the more Hans Thomas realizes that the story he is reading is his very own.
Jostein Gaarder is a remarkable storyteller, crafting unbelieveable tales which readers readily grant a suspension of disbelief. The only faults I would find with this novel is that the plot seems a little too contrived at times, and the writing is sometimes a little too choppy, but I chalk that up to things lost in the translation. What isn't lost in the translation is Jostein Gaarder's sheer wonder and joy with the world around us. Too often as humans we forget to marvel at how truly marvelous our world is, at how marvelous we are, no matter what we believe in terms of how we came to be. Being awakend to that wonder is the sheer beauty of Jostein Gaarder's magical philosophical trips.
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A cross of Alice In Wonderland and ancient fairytales, I found this book hard to put down after turning page after page. It ranks up there with the others - The Little Prince, The Alchemist...
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Full of descriptive visuals, engaging concepts, soda and sticky buns, 'The Solitaire Mystery' is a page turner!
As the title indicates, the fifty-two card deck (including one Joker, of course!) is the vehicle for this story.
I found all Hans Thomas (the main character), his father, his fashion model mother, and all of the other characters easy to relate to, and any loose ends of the intricate plot are tied up neatly by the end of the book.
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A wonderful story to read aloud, as well.
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The story is wonderful and keeps the reader wonder to the last page of the story.
Even at the very end there is a small complex that rise, eventually everything get solved but with open questions.
For myself, the only question left to answer is, How come that Thomas' grandfather knows that Thomas is his grandson at the same time the grandson realises that?
I mean the grandfather was the one who wrote the story and he added the last bit after forgetting German, but he still knew about his grandson from Joker's note before Thomas got to read it!
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