Jonathan Carroll - Page 1
| British Pbk Original - Tor (2003) |
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White Apples
What if your heart stopped but the music didn't?
A captivating and constantly surprising tale of life, death and the realm between.
Vincent Ettrich, an engaging philanderer, discovers that he has died and come back to life - but he has no idea why, or any memory of the experience. Beset by peculiar omens and strange characters, including a talking rat and an inexplicable tattoo on the neck of his most recent lover, he gradually discovers that he was deliberately brought back by his one true love, Isabelle, because she is pregnant with their son - a child who, if correctly raised, will play a crucial role in saving the cosmic mosaic that is the universe.
But to be brought up the right way, he must be educated by his own father. Specifically, he must be taught what Ettrich learned on the other side - if only Ettrich himself can remember it!
Tempting and provocative, White Apples is forbidden fruit plucked straight from the orchard of Jonathan Carroll’s abundant and legendary imagination.
`I envy anyone who has yet to enjoy the sexy, eerie and addictive novels of Jonathan Carroll. They are delicious treats - with devilish tricks inside them’ Washington Post
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First British Edition Gollancz (2001) |
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| Paperback - Gollancz (2002) |
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The Wooden Sea
What would happen if, in the middle of a contented, middle-aged life, your seventeen-year-old self suddenly appeared? And what if he said you had done everything wrong? That he didn’t like what you’ve become, the fact you gave up all those one-time dreams, the way you have taken a life that once belonged to him and made it into something as tame and unimportant as a house pet?
But there’s still hope because he’s come to help. He’s going to show you how to live the rest of your life the right way. Confusing enough? Almost simultaneously you’re catapulted forward to the last day of your life. And after seeing how you end, you’re brought right back to today - and that seventeen-year-old you.
So you have your now-self, your seventeen-year-old self, and a glimpse of what you’re going to be like on the last day of your life. Is this Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? No, because unlike Scrooge’s clear-cut path towards redemption, neither of these yous can agree on what to do next. Worse, someone not of this earth shows you very clearly that the fate of the universe could well be determined by what you do decide to do next.
Who, me?
Yes, you.
Now what?
The Wooden Sea is about a man on a quest to save the world whose unlikely companions just happen too be himself. And himself. And himself . . .
`A new book from Jonathan Carroll is still, as they used to say on the back of book jackets, a cause for celebration. He has the magic. He’ll lend you his eyes; and you will never see the world in the same way ever again.’ Neil Gaiman
`If anyone else had written it, The Wooden Sea might be merely a wearisome farrago of impossibilities. In Carroll’s hands, this truly nutty story is not only a superb entertainment but, in the end, a moving and profound fable about being young, growing old, and the changes that time brings. The ending is wonderful.’ Tom Arden, Interzone
`A quirky piece of intelligent pop that is also surprisingly moving.’ New Yorker
`The genius of Jonathan Carroll is that his main character, remain sympathetic, likeable and human through all this madness . . . The Wooden Sea more than once made me stop reading and stare out of the window in wonder.’ Infinity Plus
‘Carroll confounds the genre-rigid standards of most literary criticism, crossing from fantasy to psychological thriller to science fiction as easily as Frannie ventures back and forth in time. In the end, whether what happens in this novel is mischief or metaphysics doesn’t really matter. What does is that Carroll turns them both into his own distinctive kind of intelligent entertainment.’ New York Times
'Deliciously written, at times achingly funny: a literary treat' Horrorworld.com
| Paperback - Indigo (2000) |
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First British Edition Gollancz (1999) |
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The Marriage of Sticks
See Review by
Jay Russell
- one of the greatest talents the horror industry has produced for some time… (Black Tears)
Just the smallest twist of the dial away from normal - one click - and everything we know for certain vanishes.
Returning to her class reunion after fifteen years, Miranda Romanac has her heart set on meeting James Stillman once again. Her first boyfriend, her life's never quite measured up to the ideal he represented for her. She is devastated, therefore, to learn of his death three years before, in a car crash.
Her life settles back into its routine in New York, but things start to change when she meets the fabulous Frances Hatch, mistress of many of the great artists in Paris in the twenties. At the same time, Miranda starts an affair with Hugh, a married man. Then she sees James Stillman again, waving to her across the street. Is it possible? Oh yes, and things are just beginning for her.
Through a series of extraordinary events, Miranda learns from both the living and the dead just who she really is and how far back her history goes. It is not a happy discovery but there is the possibility of redemption. If she has the courage and imagination to recapture a life she once thought her own, there is a chance. But if she fails, there will be hell to pay. And more.
'Beauty and terror are the twin poles of Carroll's fiction… exquisite prose' The Scotsman
'The unfolding of the plot pulls the reader through a succession of strikingly bizarre incidents which are recounted in a languid prose style at suggests a delicate and distant irony’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Carroll writes with a stark elegance that infused the everyday world with a hint of surrealism and a taste of the unreal. Highly recommended’ Library Journal
'On the level of sheer sentence construction and his pellucid prose, Jonathan Carroll is among the most purely pleasing writers of the decade. Yet his elegant, entrancing novels have real depth' Kim Newman, Independent
‘Reading Jonathan Carroll, one thinks of a blind person stroking a drugged tiger - an experience that is sensuous, dreamy and dangerous all at once. And then, of course, the tiger wakes up.’ Bruce Wagner
| Paperback - Indigo (2000) |
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Kissing the Beehive
When bestselling novelist Sam Bayer decides it's time he wrote his Great Book, he chooses as his subject the death of a teenage beauty, Pauline Ostrova - the 'Beehive'.
The town of Crane's View, upstate New York, never felt the same after Sam discovered her body, floating in a lake, over twenty years before. Her boyfriend, Edward Durant, was arrested for the murder, tried and imprisoned. He died in Sing Sing jail. Sam Bayer’s new book will tell her story, bring her to life again, restore something of what the town had lost.
Until, that is, he meets Veronica Lake. The perfect fan - the perfect woman at first Veronica is everything Bayer could want. But soon she's at the next stage of the story, before he's written it, leading and pursuing him into confusion, fear and desire. Bayer is drawn by an old childhood friend - Frannie McCabe, now Crane's View's Chief of Police into seeing Pauline's death as part of an incredible, and terrifying, conspiracy.
'Carroll orchestrates this smartly layered narrative with skill, and does force you to turn the pages ... Adroit entertainment. File under "beachwear" and use accordingly' Douglas Kennedy, The Times
'A spellbinding narrative. The literary world should be singing Carroll's praises' Nicholas Royle
'Imagine the sheer fun and imaginative sweep of something like Twin Peaks undergirded by an unwavering narrative touch and a very realistic concern with moral issues and character' USA Today
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First British Edition Macdonald (1992) |
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After Silence
In the first riveting moments of After Silence, a man is holding a pistol to the head of a teenage boy. The man is petrified, the boy is smiling. Instantly we know something terrible -- the man will shoot the boy, who is his son.
How did it happen? What vicious turn of fate brought these two here in this most shocking and elemental endgame?
In his late thirties, Max Fischer is a successful cartoonist living in Los Angeles. Scarred by recent love affairs, he is cautious but nevertheless intrigued when he meets Lily Aaron and her nine-year-old son Lincoln. Lily is the manager of an off-beat LA restaurant who devotes most of her Iife to raising her delightful son single-handedly.
The longer he knows the Aarons, the more Max falls in love with them. The perfect mate, the perfect child. What's even better is both seem to love him, too, with equal intensity.
But as soon as Max moves in, he begins to uncover secret after impossible secret about his new family. He can find no trace of Lily's late husband. Worse, he discovers she has an awful secret in her past, which has forced her to hide from the world ever since.
What do you do when you know your beloved is the worst kind of criminal? What should you do when the right and moral choice will ruin the rest of your life - as well as those you most love?
From an award-winning writer who, the Washington Post says, 'creates contemporary romances in the literary tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne and other masters of the form' comes a story very unlike his others. A story of dangerous love, in all its magnificent and forbidden forms.
'I envy anyone who has yet to enjoy the sexy, eeric and addictive novels of Jonathan Carroll. They are delicious treats - with devilish tricks inside them’ Michael Dirda in Washington Post
An absolute original, a novelist of rare and terrifying power’ Pat Conroy, author of The Prince Of Tides
About The Author
Jonathan Carroll was born in New York City in 1949. He went to college at Rutgers and studied for his Masters degree at the University of Virginia, while working as an English teacher. A desire to teach abroad brought him to Vienna, where he now lives. His first published story was in the Transatlantic Review in 1976, entitled 'The Party at Brenda's House'. His first novel was The Land of Laughs (1980). As well as his novels, he has continued to publish short stories through the '80s, and was given the World Fantasy Award in 1988 for his story 'Friends Best Man’. Many of these were assembled in his collection The Panic Hand (1989). As well as writing fiction, Jonathan Carroll also writes screenplays.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
White Apples
(Tor Pbk,
2003)
The Wooden Sea
(Gollancz,
2001)
Gollancz Pbk May 02
The Marriage of Sticks
(Gollancz,
1999)
Indigo Pbk Aug 00
Kissing the Beehive
(Gollancz,
1998)
Gollancz Jun 98
Indigo Pbk Aug 00
The Panic Hand
Short Stories
(
1995)
From the Teeth of Angels
(
1994)
After Silence
(Macdonald,
1992)
Outside the Dog Museum
(Macdonald,
1991)
Black Cocktail
(
1990)
A Child Across the Sky
(
1989)
Legend Pbk 1989
Sleeping in Flame
(
1988)
Bones of the Moon
(
1987)
Voice of Our Shadow
(
1983)
The Land of Laughs
(
1980)
Gollancz Millenium Pbk Sep 00
White Apples
WebPage: 
by Jonathan Carroll
