I am a sucker for an epistolary novel, and this one is told in a combination of notes, transcripts, drawings, and so on to give it a sense that it’s a scrapbook. The Jigsaw Jungle follows Claudia’s quest to figure out why her father has vanished. One evening he sends an email saying he will be home late and then never returns. Claudia’s mother then has to go on a work trip to Switzerland and Claudia ends up staying with her grandfather for two weeks while she starts solving the puzzle her father sends her in an attempt to solve the mystery of his disappearance. There’s also young romance and her best friend’s struggle with no longer being an only child and adjusting to a new baby.
~~~SPOILERS FOLLOW~~~
I figured out the reason her father left on the fifth page, so the rest of the book was less suspenseful for me, but it didn’t necessarily take away from the narrative. I understand that this was a very personal book for Levine, as her husband also came out as gay to her, and those feelings give the book its emotional authenticity. The emotions Claudia’s mother expresses and the complexity of the reaction are well done. My major issue with this book is that a grown man leaves it to his TWELVE YEAR OLD daughter to solve the mystery of his disappearance and reads all her heart-rending emails without ever responding in any way other than sending her more puzzles to crack!!! She thinks he’s dead for a chunk of it! How could you put your coming out onto a twelve year old??? Why doesn’t he send these puzzles to his wife instead? I’m not trying to understate how stressful it is to come out –I’ve done it a number of times — and I can’t imagine the additional pressure of coming out to a wife after fifteen years of marriage, but putting that emotional strain onto a child was just morally awful to me. This book spins it as a heart-warming exercise that brings Claudia and her grandfather closer together, but I kept thinking how traumatic this would be in reality. You’re trying to figure out if your dad is even alive and then once you figure out he is, he keeps making you solve more puzzles while your mom is in Switzerland??? There’s one really heart-breaking scene where she thinks her dad is going to show up and she waits for three hours only to realize later she didn’t do the puzzle right. Way to layer on the emotional trauma there. Just write your wife a letter if you can’t do it face to face.
Overall I liked the format a lot and it zipped by, but the fact that a grown man forces his daughter to do jigsaw puzzles to announce he’s gay to his family really undermined my enjoyment of this book.
