A review by octavia_cade
Maya by Jostein Gaarder

2.0

The book to which this is a sequel, The Solitaire Mystery, is one of my favourites. This, sad to say, is not. There are some interesting bits here - I particularly love the idea of a woman who looks exactly like the subject of two Goya paintings - but they are buried very deep down. Maya starts to gather momentum about 200 pages in, when the protagonist goes to visit the Prado, but it's a slog to get that far. The Fijian "summit" meeting is just plain dull. (Pompous and pontificating may be a better description.) I remember reading Sophie's World and being amazed at the ingenious ways in which Gaarder wrote about philosophy. He does not have the same gift for writing about science, and this book, though it gets an extra point for intelligence, is woefully self-indulgent and flabby about the edges.