"The Ringmaster's Daughter" was quite an engaging read for me, and I particularly enjoyed the stories within the story. ( )

"My brain is seething. I'm bubbling with hundreds of new ideas. They just keep welling up. Before I manage to dwell on one of my inspirations, it generally melts into an even better idea, but this, too, is so fickle of character that I struggle to save it from the constant volcanic stream of new ideas..."

In an old fairy story Panina Manina, a trapeze artist, falls and breaks her neck. As the ringmaster bends over her he notices an amulet of amber around her neck, the same trinket he had given his own lost child, swept away in a torrent some sixteen years earlier. The theme of a father finding a long lost daughter runs through this novel which is told by Petter, a precocious child and a fantasist.

As an adult, Petter's incredible imagination leads him to become a ghost writer known only as The Spider. "At last I've decided what I want to be. I shall continue doing what I've always done, but from now on I'll make a living out of it. I don't feel the need to be famous, that's an important consideration, but I could still become extremely rich." But he become involves in a sequence of literary deceits which are brought to a head at the Bologna Bookfair at the same time as events conspire to bring him face to face with his own long lost daughter.

I really enjoyed this book to the point that I couldn't put it down. I thought it was really unique that we got to read the stories that Petter came up with. My definite favorite was his story of a chess game with living pieces set in Scotland. Other notables were his short stories of "The Souls' Constant", "Triple Murder Post-mortem" and a Danish family tragedy.

Sometimes Petter tells stories in a way that reveals something about him or something important that he can't say flat out. Every story that Petter tells is amazing and tragic and ends with a twist. Gaarder uses his "story within a story" method yet again and it works successfully like how he employed it with his other works: "The Solitaire Mystery" and "Sophie's World."

I think what has made it a better story than others lies in its intensity: love, pain, treason, mystery are interwoven very tightly. Gaarder has succeeded in creating a very intellectual, yet eccentric narrator with depth. Among other things, the book discusses the core of creativity and the role of the creator.

Book Details:

Title The Ringmaster's Daughter
Author Jostein Gaarder
Reviewed By Purplycookie ( )

I thought more would come of the little man. I have enjoyed a few of his other things for their ideas, if not necessarily the writing itself. ( )

This follows the life of Petter who starts off as a bullied child who sells his homework skills through to Petter The Spider who sells ideas to authors for books when they have writers block.

Petter make very few friends one of whom is Maria who he tells his stories to and fathers a child. They go their seperate ways and years later he starts thinking about her when ideas he has sold start appearing as books in Germany. Is Maria trying to get back in touch?

The ending of the book brings Petters world crashing down due to story told which was too late.

Gaarders books are always great to read but you need to get on the same wavelength as him to fall into the trap of what is always a great read. The shame is with this book by the time I got fully into it I was already half way through. But it was fun! ( )