Raskin, Ellen - The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues

[oyceter]

Everyone who told me to read this was right on the money. I think this may be my favorite Raskin book. It's a little hard to describe, but it feels more human than her other books, with the possible exception of The Westing Game.

Tattooed Potato is structured as a series of mysteries, sort of like an Encyclopedia Brown book (without the upside-down solutions). Dickory Dock, who silently suffers numerous jokes because of her name, manages to get a job as an assistant to Garson, a slick portrait painter who also occasionally helps the police paint portraits of crime suspects. Garson actually reminds me of Lymond a little (then again, pretty much everything does nowadays) -- he's extremely facile and Dickory senses that he only presents certain facets of himself to the world to protect himself, but it also must be said that Lymond would probably never take on the alias of Inspector Noserag.

The first few crimes that they have to solve are very fun and zany and felt like Raskin's other books (esp. Leon/Noel), but as Dickory's powers of observation and deduction get better and better, and as everything starts coming together, the mystery of Garson starts to unravel. And while I guessed most of what was going on with Garson (a rarity in a Raskin book), I wasn't prepared for the final ending. And it was good, and everything fit in that wonderfully satisfying way when all the clues and hints in a world come together. Kind of like a well-built sci-fi book actually...

Links:
- rilina's review

Comments

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's one of my favorite Raskins (AND I CAN'T FIND MY COPY! I KNOW IT'S IN THE HOUSE, AAAAGH!) (sorry). As a kid I got introduced to her through The Westing Game (which I still reread when I need a lift), but as an (at least chronological) adult I enjoy this and Figgs best. What's neat about TP is it's really all about art, too -- you know Raskin supported herself as an artist, right? -- and her own two-family house in Greenwich Village provided the setting for the book, as well. I think it's really rather autobiographical, in a transmuted sort of way. I wish I'd had it to read when I was a fourteen-year-old aspiring artist.

((shyly)) I did a MetaFilter post on her once -- http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/19593. ((runs off))

[oyceter]

I really love this one ^_^. I had read Westing Game as a kid, and Figgs and Phantoms (though I didn't know it was her until last month!), so it was incredibly wonderful rereading all of them in the past year or so.

I didn't actually know that about Raskin! I had sort of known she did illustrate (obviously), but that was the extent of it. Yeah, I loved all the scenes with the art professor of doom, and the discovery of the painting of the fruit seller, and, oh, I so very much love the ending.

Thanks for the link!! And if you ever have other things like that, please please post them!

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

it was incredibly wonderful rereading all of them in the past year or so

I find Raskin really, really rewards rereading -- and not just for the puzzle aspects (lots of which I didn't get as a kid) -- there really are a lot of layers to the books which only reveal themselves after rereadings.

I had sort of known she did illustrate (obviously), but that was the extent of it

She was a real artist of an illustrator -- and I love her illustrations for her own books, too. If you follow the links to the manuscript version of the Westing Game you can see she was really concerned even with the appearance of the type on the page. Obviously a v visual and verbal person.

And if you ever have other things like that, please please post them!

I may go a-diggin -- I thought she was pretty much perfect for a MeFi post, since a lot of people have read her books but she's not well-known, and there's not a lot known about her life, even, really. I do like recommending obscure authors to people, it's sort of like resuscitating them. (Although she's not exactly obscure. It's kind of neat -- if you press people, suddenly they'll remember reading at least 2-3 of her books as a kid....)

[oyceter]

Thanks again for the link!! The manuscripts with her editing on it were especially cool. I was very impressed with the whole "book margins the size of a kid's thumb" so holding the book wouldn't obscure the text, which makes so much sense! Would make reading while eating a lot easier for me ;).

Ellen Raskin

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

I was very impressed with the whole "book margins the size of a kid's thumb" so holding the book wouldn't obscure the text

Weren't details like that just awesome? It was like she was concerned with the whole design of the book, not "just" the text or the pictures. She was really something.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

That one is my favorite Raskin, too, and I could never understand why it wasn't as famous as The Westing Game. At least, not until I grew up, reread it, and realized how very strange a book it is, an aspect that had slipped by me at the time, since I simply accepted everything beyond my experience as equally odd. Still, I wish it were more widely known, because it is *such* a good book.

[oyceter]

I do the same thing -- almost every time I reread something I loved as a kid, I sort of realize how incredibly strange some of the things are. Of course, it probably didn't help that as a kid, I just sort of automatically assumed anything not too obviously historical was set in the present day.