Jigsaw
A Puzzle in Ninety-Three and a Half Pieces
Celebrated humorist and short-story writer M.A.C. Farrant’s new non-fiction work comprises ninety-three puzzle pieces that mimic the actual practice of assembling a jigsaw puzzle. By turns whimsical, insightful, meditative, funny, and factual, the “pieces” of Jigsaw touch on themes readers of the celebrated humorist and fiction writer M.A C. Farrant have encountered before: existence, love, joy, science, history, aging, roads, and Buddhism – and our seemingly universal love of jigsaw puzzles.
Once again, the author of the bestselling memoir One Good Thing and of the literary miniatures The World Afloat, The Days, and The Great Happiness writes against the prevailing zeitgeist of doom, accessing its flip side via humour and curiosity. Jigsaw is a much-needed mental respite that offers playful, rejuvenating potential answers to the dreaded question, How in the world are we going to get through these fearful times?
M.A.C. Farrant is the author of eighteen works of fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and drama. Her novel, The Strange Truth About Us – A Novel of Absence, (Talonbooks, 2011) was cited as a Best Fiction Book of 2012 by the Globe and Mail. The World Afloat (Talonbooks, 2014), the first in a trilogy of collections of miniature fiction and prose poems, won the Victoria Book Prize. One Good Thing: A Living Memoir, published by Talonbooks in 2021, was a BC bestseller. Forthcoming from Talonbooks: Jigsaw: A Puzzle in Ninety-Three-and-a-Half Pieces, (2023, NF) and My Turquoise Years Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2024). Archived material is in the Special Collections Branch at the University of Victoria.
