Book Review: --Maya-- by Jostein Gaarder

~Today I bring you yet another book review, this time for Maya by Jostein Gaarder. Previously, I wrote a very positive review for Gaarder's previous novel, Sophie's World, and Maya evokes many of the same themes as the other book. Like Sophie's World, Maya is an intricate nexus of philosophy, biology, and spirituality: one of those books that makes you question the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Unfortunately, Maya is not as good as Sophie's World, but I will attempt to review this book while avoiding overt comparisons.

The story of Maya (which means illusion) is told from the viewpoint of two characters: Frank, a Norwegian evolutionary biologist, and the wonderfully-named John Spooke, an English author. In the late 1990s, They meet each other at a resort island in Fiji, which happens to lie directly on the international date line and will consequently be the first place in the world to experience the new millennium (or at least the only place you won't need snowshoes).

On the island, Frank and Spooke meet a diverse host of characters, most notably a Spanish couple named Ana and Jose, who are constantly exchanging strange philosophical quotes. The novel meanders along from there as Frank attempts to solve what seems to be the central mystery of the book: why does Ana seems so familiar, not just to him, but to everyone?

The narrative structure of Maya suffers from numerous time shifts. For example, much of the novel is written in the form of a letter from Frank to his estranged wife, but other portions of the story are set in a constantly-changing "present", which in turn sometimes skips over to the viewpoint of John Spooke.

Later, we learn that what was depicted in the letter was partially inaccurate; for example, Frank carries on a long philosophical conversation with a gecko (imagining its responses), an event which turns out to have been entirely fabricated by Spooke as part of his novel. There's also a whole fantasy-subplot involving time travel and spontaneous generation which ultimately went nowhere. As you can see, I found Maya difficult to follow.

As with Gaarder's previous works, Maya asks us Big Questions. The central philosophical question of this book is, "Does life have meaning?". Frank, one of the main characters, is an evolutionary biologist who at first takes a purely scientific viewpoint that humans are merely carriers for our genes and that there is no greater purpose to life. His viewpoint gradually shifts towards something more esoteric, in which the purpose of life for billions of years has been to produce human consciousness, so that "the universe can experience itself". While this may seem to be getting into the realm of spirituality and religion, I must commend Gaarder for avoiding religious answers and symbolism which would ultimately make the novel seem biased.

The strongest aspect of Maya was in "The Manifesto", a collection of the 52 philosophical witticisms bandied between Ana and Jose, reproduced in full at the back of the book. While some border on the ridiculous, others offer very interesting ways of looking at the world. For example, #1 is:

There exists a world. In terms of probability this borders on the impossible. It would have been far more likely if, by chance, there was nothing at all. Then, at least, no one would have begun asking why there was nothing.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of Maya is its lack of closure. I don't mean the ending, although in fact I would be giving nothing away to talk about the ending, as there really was no ending. Maya asks a lot of questions and provides many possible answers, but it doesn't draw any conclusions. It didn't feel like a novel, because in the end very little actually happened. Quite frankly (if you'll pardon the pun), I was looking for something a bit more concrete.

Ultimately, if you're interested in reading a "philosophical novel", I would not recommend Maya as your first book by Jostein Gaarder. Although if you've read some of his other works, you may very well enjoy Maya. If you read or have read this book, please share your thoughts with me. Perhaps you can make more sense of it than I can. ~Oyasumi!