Customer Reviews

The Puzzle King

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Betsy Carter has achieved something remarkable with her third novel; although the background of the story is the Gathering Storm for Jews in Germany during the 1930s, the foreground is the absorbing, full-of-wonders story of an American Jewish family that is based on the author's own forebears. Prodigiously researched and rich in the details of New York daily life in the early decades of the 20th century (it's comforting and thrilling to encounter icons like the "new" Yankee Stadium and the Metropolitan Museum of Art), the book starts with the story of 9-year-old Simon Phelps, who emigrates from Lithuania to New York in 1892, bringing along only a pad and some crayons. As a young man, he meets and marries the beautiful Flora Grossman, a character based on Carter's own great-aunt Flora. With his artistic brilliance and determination, Simon is dubbed America's Puzzle King, who makes a fortune inventing and producing the first mass-marketable cardboard jigsaw puzzles. That too, really happened to Carter's great-uncle, but nearly all the other characters are fictional, like Flora's slinky sister Seema (called "Seamless" by a boyfriend), who collects beaux--and crosses. You know from the book's brief prologue that Flora will become an unlikely heroine (as the real Flora did), with the help of Simon's careful planning and extraordinary generosity. But Carter has also fashioned a diverting and suspenseful saga of the years leading up to 1936, moving back and forth from the Phelpses' affluent life in Yonkers, New York, to the struggles of Flora's family back in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Talk about seamless. Carter has woven a tapestry of real and imagined people and events so skillfully that there are no loose strands. Her book contains all the drama, color and dreams of the best stories---but also the drumbeat of history and the throbbing pulse of real life. Highly recommended!

I liked this book because it was a new story about the Holocaust that I had not heard before. The book starts out great and the characters are wonderful, but about 3/4 of the way through it losses steam and there are a lot of loose ends at the ending because you never find out what happens to some of the main characters which was disappointing.

The larger point of the book was the history lesson and the fact that people were saved and I understand that. It would have made a great non-fiction. I'm wouldn't read it again, but I'm glad I now know about the story.

I think that this book along with Pictures At An Exhibition are the two sleeper books of the year. A compeling story and well written I could not put it down.

Thanks to the gift of her imagination, Betsy Carter has turned a tale from her own history into a fully-faceted story of family devotion spanning two continents and forty years. Lovers of historical novels, especially those that explore the immigrant experience and the years leading up to the Holocuast, will be drawn in by the rich detail of Carter's research, particularly as she brings to life the everyday world of a boy who arrives in the United States alone and lonely, yet through talent and grit, turns himself into "the puzzle king." This boy, in fact, has been modeled after Carter's own great-uncle.

This is a subtle yet powerful book, with likable characters who respoect one another and rarely shout--even when, say, their sister may be endangering her own life. The portrayal of Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, when the seeds of Nazism are taking root, is especially poignant, and give a reader honest answers to the question of "why didn't every Jew leave?"

"The Puzzle King" is a novel based on factual events that occurred within a family prior to World War II. Simon, a Lithuanian-born Jew, comes to the lower East Side of New York in the early years of the 20th century and makes his way - with great perseverance - to a career in the

world of commercial design. He meets and marries, Flora, a German-Jewish immigrant and they establish life in a suburb of NYC. As events in Europe during the early 1930s begin to demonstrate a gathering threat to the members of Flora's large family living in Germany, the now-Americanized couple becomes more and more aware of the certain doom that faces these people. Their responses and behavior, to each other and to the dilemma facing their relatives, make for an often touching and always fully absorbing narrative.It's an informative story told in a highly accessible and often even amusing style; this reader was fully engaged and often quite moved.The book contains an unspoken element of timeliness in that, in an entirely individualist way, it conveys the importance of speaking out and acting when world events have gone completely awry. The story of this man and woman and their action are the astonishing personifications of this idea.

SPOILER ALERT...Really enjoyed this book and its characters. Then it ended. Just like that. And things just seemed to go too smoothly for Flora at the consul's office, which made me doubt that it could really have happened like that?? And I agree with the others about lack of resolution about Seema etc. It would seema to me (hehe couldn't resist) that she would have learned her lesson from bad fit boyfriend #1 and leave bad fit boyfriend and his tee poo peep pa horn and leave on the first boat back with the rest of them? She's going to settle for life with Karl? And Simon's passing was so uneventful? Would have liked some reaction from Pissboy, Margot etc???? I'm a little Puzzled why the book ended so abruptly. : (

The book arrived in the time frame they said it would in brand new condition. The story was well liked by most of us in our book club.

I adored this book. I thought that the characters were all well-depicted and very engaging. The story moved along at an appropriate pace. In recent years, I have not read many books about immigrants, but this one reminded me of their poignancy and emotional pull. I would highly recommend this book. I was suprised to see that it only had a handful of reviews.

There are a lot of stories around WWII, so you think everything may have already been written about it. This is a new perspective. There is a sense of impending doom throughout the whole narrative that creates suspense. There are a few plot holes that raise some questions though. It was popular within my book club. I would recommend it.

I love "rags to riches" stories, as well as historical fiction. I found this book by accident in the library...the cover grabbed me. Good read!