The Puzzle Master
By Danielle TrussoniBook of the Week
I’ll be 51 this Sunday and I read two books a week. It adds up, and this is the best I’ve ever read. As it’s very far from an ordinary read , I can’t write a review as I normally would. The plot and characters are fantastic, compelling, memorable, surprising…but the book is more than anything a magic box. Trussoni also has an unsettling ability to mention everything of interest and everything that has come up lately. I thought about making a website that would emulate the ability of a pile of transparency sheets to create a composite image, and that process is mentioned. I learned about the idea of the singularity this week–the possible future time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable–and it’s there. A central theme is a kind of mythical creature I had mentioned to me recently. And the characters, and of course the author, see into the reader in other ways, with the bizarre turns in the tale perfectly allowing every nuance of the strange folks within to emerge, but also startling the consumer of this sorcery on every page. What’s the book about? Everything, but there’s a framework. A puzzle maker, who, through a brain injury, gains the remarkable ability to see “that particular kind of order that [distinguishes] a puzzle from everything else on the planet,” meets a prisoner who hands him a drawing, a puzzle he can’t even begin to unlock. It leads him to letters and a diary that describe a dangerous quest to “lift the veil between the human and the Divine and [stare] directly into the eyes of God.” There’s homework before you read this so that you can be in the right frame of mind to take in its wonder. Read Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, Aimee Pokwatka’s Self Portrait with Nothing, and Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. And then clear a weekend.
| Pages | 384 |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Pub Date | June 13, 2023 |
| Series Name | |
| Translator |
| Reviewer | Henrietta Verma |
| Issue Date | March 2, 2023 |
| Issue No. | 94 |
| Tags | Book of the Week, Historical, Literary, Suspense, Thrillers |
The Lover of No Fixed Abode.
By Carlo Fruttero and Franco LucentiniFor Donna Leon Fans
This strange, beautiful tale wedges readers into the crowded boats and alleys of Venice while whisking them along on a three-day romance with a Roman princess and the down-at-heel tour guide she falls for. The two seem to float above the city’s watery fray even before meeting. After meeting, they withdraw completely into their own emotional realm, “literally liquefied” by their fascination and passion for each other. Time is immaterial, they agree, as they find themselves “precariously suspended between being and non-being,” contemplate “intimate perplexities on who is who, where the I ends and the you begins,” and eat “a variety of little inventions.” The love story, which as the translator’s note explains, features more robustly in the book than the crime tale related to the princess’s work as an art dealer, soon provokes questions in the reader. Where is the tour guide from? Why must he leave Venice despite his grief over losing the love he has just stumbled upon? The answer to the mystery is startling and brings up many questions about the nature of life and how the past, and past injustices, can resonate today. Try this after Danielle Trussoni’s The Puzzle Master; you’ll come back to Earth eventually
| Pages | 320 |
| Publisher | Bitter Lemon Press |
| Pub Date | February 20, 2024 |
| Series Name | |
| Translator | Translated from Italian by Gregory Dowling |
| Reviewer | Henrietta Verma |
| Issue Date | May 25, 2023 |
| Issue No. | 107 |
| Tags | International, Italy, Mystery & Detective, Psychological, Thrillers, World Literature |
The Puzzle Box
By Trussoni, DanielleBook of the Week
This sequel to Trussoni’s 2023 The Puzzle Master (my favorite book of all time!) finds savant Mike Brink once more faced with a puzzle that others have found unsolvable. This time his help is requested by the Japanese imperial family, who dispatch another puzzle genius, Sakura Nakamoto, to whisk him from New York to Tokyo. Mike is well known for his work creating puzzles and taking part in competitions in which participants recite the string of numbers that form pi, his synesthesia allowing the numbers to appear “as a scale of color at the edge of his vision.” These are the upsides of the accident that left him an affable genius. But there are drawbacks. He’s so far been unable to form any romantic relationship and struggles to understand himself. So when Sakura tells him that the beautiful Dragon Puzzle Box, a puzzle that’s uber-famous in Mike’s world, is available for him to try, and that it will help him to understand his gift, he jumps at it. This is no ordinary box—others who have tried to open it have had fingers amputated or been poisoned by the puzzle’s booby traps. Work on it takes Mike on thrilling journeys not only to fascinating Japanese locales but further into the recesses of his mind than he thought possible. Engrossed readers will happily make the trips with him. While you’re waiting for this wonderful follow-up, get The Puzzle Master and read our interview with Trussoni when that book was published.
| Pages | 336 |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Pub Date | October 8, 2024 |
| Series Name | |
| Translator |
| Reviewer | Henrietta Verma |
| Issue Date | February 15, 2024 |
| Issue No. | 142 |
| Tags | Book of the Week, Historical, Literary, Suspense, Thrillers |