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 seventeen works of fiction, prose poems, non-fiction, memoir, two plays, and over one hundred book reviews and essays for the Vancouver Sun and the Toronto Globe & Mail. Her memoir, My Turquoise Years, which she adapted for the stage, premiered in 2013 at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver. Her novel, The Strange Truth About Us - A Novel of Absence, (Talon) was cited as a Best Fiction Book of 2012 by the Globe & Mail. The World Afloat (2014, Talon), 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); My Turquoise Years 20th Anniversary Edition (2024). Archived material is in the ＂Special Collections Branch＂ at the University of Victoria.