The Error World: An Affair with Stamps

Publishers Weekly

"I have built up a stamp collection I can barely afford," Garfield confesses, "and it has brought me to the brink of ruin." Yet despite a significant amount of autobiographical candor, his story doesn't quite deliver the emotional wallop promised in those opening lines. His youthful enthusiasm for stamp collecting, as well as the rediscovery of that passion in his mid-40s, when he has the income to buy the stamps he always dreamed about owning as a boy, are richly detailed. The few passages depicting the personal consequences of that pursuit, however, are too detached. Several digressions into the history of stamps and stamp collecting slow the narrative, which picks up energy only when Garfield returns to his most intimate interest-his focus on collecting only rare stamps that contain printing errors, for example, or tracking down the young girl who won a design competition he entered as a young boy decades ago. Garfield hits upon some interesting psychological questions about the nature of collecting all sorts of material objects, but it often feels like he is writing around the heart of his story. (Jan. 20)

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Library Journal

Garfield (Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World) wittily recounts his boyhood obsession with stamp collecting. Like other collectors, he took it into adulthood and sought out the most valuable specimens. Later, he abandoned his passion, moving on to a more mature, collection-free phase of his life. A delight for philatelists everywhere.
—Lynne Maxwell

Kirkus Reviews

Observer feature writer Garfield (Private Battles, 2006, etc.) examines his passion for stamp collecting. The veteran British author begins in late 2006, when he was on "the brink of ruin." He was in debt; his marriage had collapsed; he was involved in an affair with a woman from his past. And philately was the proximate-though not, he reveals later, the ultimate-cause of all this. As Garfield slowly unspools the story of his rise and fall, he detours frequently to zoom in on areas of stamp collecting's increasingly unfamiliar map. (Today's young people don't seem interested in the hobby, he notes.) He sketches the history of the postage stamp, interviews a former U.K. Postmaster General, visits stamp dealers and authorities, attends auctions, glances at how various writers (e.g., Philip Roth, Louise Erdrich) have used philately in their fiction, notes that celebrities like John Lennon have been collectors and examines stamps-never-issued in the Royal Mail Archive. Garfield began collecting as a boy, he says, then gave it up as an adolescent and young man, but returned to it, with renewed vigor, in his 40s. He made substantial purchases (concealed from his wife) and became obsessed with "error stamps," those with printing or production mistakes that elevated their value, sometimes enormously. He eventually credits Freud for helping him understand that his collecting was a form of compensation for the untimely losses of his father to a heart attack, his mother to cancer and his brother to viral pneumonia. Garfield depicts his marital infidelity in the same, vaguely self-serving light-and, of course, the flaws on his beloved stamps are analogous to those in his character. He eventually soldhis most valuable stamps and paid some debts. The author's enthusiasm does not prove contagious. Agent: Pat Kavanagh/PFD