Customer Reviews

The Solitaire Mystery

5 star:		(97)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Solitaire Mystery is Jostein Gaarder's best book. (though arguably not his greatest, which is probably Sophie's World). Very few books make one want to sit down and re-read them all through again after the first reading, but this is one of them. It is deceptively simple, yet the ideas are so striking that you can't work out why nobody ever pointed them out before. Jostein Gaarder took the theme of Alice in Wonderland to create an entirely new and modern story based around the cards - you'll never look at a playing-card in the same way again. Buy this for your entire family, even for your children or grandchildren. Once you've read it you'll wonder why you never read it before. A classic plot, yet such a very new one. Simple yet incredibly complex, yet an intelligent child could understand it. A novel of ideas that is coherent and striking and memorable. I tried very hard to think of anything I didn't like or found substandard in this book, and... I just couldn't. It is perfection itself. Even rereadings are highly recommended. You discover the smallest details and nuances that passed unremarked the first time around, which link back and forward to past or future events, and only build up an even more coherent picture.

In a story within a story, "The Solitaire Mystery" by Jostein Gaarder follows a sailor who gets shipwrecked on an island and finds another man there, also a cast away, who had been lost there 52 years before. The older man lives on the island with 53 strange little people, who on a certain celebratory day, prepare a sentence for a grand story. No one knows the sentences of the others (they can barely remember their own), and the "court jester" among them arranges them so the story is coherent, representative of the past and present and also so it prophesizes the future.

All this is read by a 12-year-old boy, Hans Thomas, who is traveling from Norway with his father by car to Greece, where Hans Thomas's mother is living. She had left the family eight years before to become a model and neither Hans Thomas nor his father, an arm-chair philosopher, has heard from her since. Hans has a problem with his remaining parent, too. He drinks too much, and gets drunk regularly on the journey south.

But when a funny little man gives Hans Thomas a strange magnifying glass, and a baker in Dorf gives him a correspondingly tiny book baked into a sticky bun, Hans is the connection between the two stories, living out his quest to go get his "Mommy" in Greece, and spending time reading the story of the mysterious island and the strange people who inhabit it. There are obvious connections between Hans Thomas's journey, his problems in life and who he is with the sticky-bun book's plot, which is very complex, with many seemingly disparate aspects and facets.

As the story progresses, the themes of the essence of being, of God's role in the world, destiny and the joy of being alive/the beauty of the world resonate in both stories. Gaarder, a former philosophy teacher in Norway, concentrates on these aspects of philosophy, using both stories to illustrate his themes and intrigue his reader.

While I read that this is a young adult book, I found it quite engaging, particularly once I was able to devote enough time to it at one sitting to be swept up in the plot. For some time it alternates chapters between Hans's journey and the journey in the sticky-bun book, at which point the relationships between them become apparent and compelling. I also read a lot of comparison's to Gaarder's well known novel "Sophie's World," which I've also read. I think the comparison, while natural, isn't necessarily that helpful. "Sophie's World" was translated from the Norwegian into English first, but was written after "Solitaire" and is different; While both deal with philosophical themes and young adults, "Sophie's World" is a kind of brief history of philosophy. "The Solitaire Mystery" concentrates on the above-mentioned themes in a way that is fulfilling to any age of reader; the themes make the philosophical issues a support for a riveting plot.

I recommend this novel. It's fun and fantastic, but leaves you feeling pleasantly full of ideas and reactions, as well as appreciative of the life we get to live.

The Solitaire Mystery is more than a book. In the words of Mr. Coreander, a character in The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, "There are many doors to Fantastica, my boy. There are other such magic books. A lot of people read them without noticing. It all depends who gets his hands on such books."

I believe that Gaarder truly gives readers a new doorway into `Fantastica', by analogy. He demonstrates how literature can be an art only the imagination can truly understand. After the first time I read this book I had become so immersed into the story, I picked it up again and began reading it again. This is definitely a book to get your hands on. If you desire to read a book that shows the wonders of life, the mystery of adventures, a window into your innermost being, this is the book. I have read Gaarder's Sophie's World and loved it as well. These two books are significantly different and both contain a genuine `must read' story. Gaarder's style of writing is not confusing or hard to follow. But the nature of the story is one that makes the reader think, look inside themselves for understanding, and encourages them to re-evaluate how they see life and all its wonders.

The imagination, spirit, soul, and what can be called the `innermost being' takes on many forms, and they all gather strength to take flight from different books in a variety of ways. Read The Solitaire Mystery and see where it takes you.

Like a lot of other reviewers, I read the more famous Sophie's World first and found the long philosophy lessons a bit of a slog (and the whole set-up a bit unconvincing... if I found them a slog, would a 14yo girl really have stayed captivated?). When I picked up a remaindered copy of The Solitaire Mystery a few years later, however, I decided within pages that this was by far the better book, and wondered why SW got all the acclaim. The tale within a tale was dealt with much more seamlessly, the card themes were ingenious and imaginative, the storyline had more direction and was more moving, and Hans Thomas was far, far more plausible to me than Sophie. Unlike some other reviewers (who spoke deprecatingly of the "young adult" audience this book is supposedly aimed at), I loved the simplicity and clarity of the storytelling, and found this allowed the deeply emotional issues raised to be discussed in a way which was touching without ever being pretentious or sentimental. A lovely novel.

I actually did not buy this book here at amazon.com , but I checked it out of my library. I was looking for a book randomly, and the fish on the cover caught my eye, so i picked it up, and checked it out. Oh my god. This book has changed my life forever. The book made me think so much about the world around me, and to really question life itself. How ignorant we are to walk around in our little lives, completely ignoring the greatness of everything around us, like how the sky stays up there, and how we stay planted on the ground, and how rain falls. After crying a little, and laughing a little, I finished the book with great satisfaction, and whole new persepective on life. If everyone in the world read this book, the world would be a grander place, in which we don't worry about petty differences, but instead wonder. Five stars, and nothing less.

There are very few books which can compel me to suspend my planned daily activities, in order to sit down and read without interruption. This was one of them. Jostein Gaarder is a fantastic author, and I hope that he continues to write. I was introduced to him by my eleventh grade English teacher, who suggested I read Sophie's World written by Gaarder.

The Solitaire Mystey like it's predecessor (Sophie's World) is a superbly written work of fiction, with philosophical undertones. It follows the fantastic journey of a boy and his father, searching for the boy's mother. Along the way there are many adventures, and much self discovery. As with many good books, not only does it tell a story, but it also leaves the reader with much to think about. I highly recommend it.

Firstly, i would like to confess that i am not a philosopher. Better still i know nothing about philosophy. I plucked this book off the shelf at my community library because i've heard of J. Gaarder and his better known Sophie's World (which incidentally i have not read too). Once i started reading this book however, i could not put it down. I was captivated by the twin storyline of Hans Thomas who left Norway with his philosophical father in search of his mother who had "went out into the world to find herself"; and that of Baker Hans, Albert Klages whose mother died when he was a child, Ludwig the German soldier and Frode who found himself stranded on an island with nothing but a pack of cards for company. This is a story-within-a-story in which fantasy and reality, the past and present, are brilliant mixed. I could not put the book down and had to read on chapter after chapter. Interwoven seamlessly throughout the narration are thought-provoking questions about our existence and the mystery of life. To sum up my feelings at the end of it, i was captivated, intrigued and fascinated. This book deserves a second reading and i'm only too sure that i'd enjoy it more.

" The Solitaire Mystery" is actually a book of philosophy. In the story the joker is an "ousider" who can see the truth of life that others could never understand. Most important of all, he knows that life is an exciting adventure and he never loses the curiosity of being a human. In the card game of life, we were born to be "jokers". As we grew older and older, we gradually become spades. clubs, diamonds, and hearts. Because we have lost the curiosity to find out who we really are and the true meaning of life. We simply take everything for granted. Philosophy is a way to help us to become who we ought to be-- the "jokers". I like the philosophical issuses that Hans discussed wuth his father on the journey. I found them interesting and inspiring. After readign this book, philosophy is no longer a boring subject to me but an important factor of being a real human.

The Solitaire Mystery follows a young boy, Hans Thomas, and his father on their way to find their runaway mother. Along the way, they encounter various people, each connected by a strange world long ago, leading ultimately to the unraveling of the mysterious pasts of Hans and his family.

The Solitaire Mystery explores the strange world of coincidences and determinism. It dabbles in the philosophy of consciousness, reminding one of Descartes's elegant statement, "Cogito ergo sum," except declared this time by a pack of living playing cards. While definitely surreal, Gaarder touches questions intrinsic in every culture in the world.

The only problem I had with this book was its story-within-story format. This made it somewhat difficult to follow, as it reached the point when Hans was reading a book about someone telling someone else a story told to him by another person.

However, despite the heady material The Solitaire Mystery utilizes, it still reads as light and whimsical. This is a fairytale a la Alice-in-Wonderland, but at the same time, deep and profound.

I absolutely love this book and have read it numerous times!
I read Sophie's World by the same author and really liked it so I decided to try this one and bought it at my local bookstore (I was 15 at the time) and I loved it then I still love it now (I'm 18) and would reccomend it to people of any age. Kids will love it for it's fantastical story and adults for the story but also the insight, poetry, and philsophy. It's an amazing tale of fate and fantasy and the details just lock together so cohesively to form the complex story.
It's a must read!