chabot@miles.DEC (L S Chabot) (04/10/85)
Here's a recommendation for Jonathan Carroll's novels. I believe he's only published two: The Land of Laughs & The Voice of Our Shadow The narrator of Land of Laughs is a teacher at a private school who also is the son of a very famous movie actor, and he has a passion for the books by a children's author, Marshall France. He and his similarly-interested lover set out to the town of this deceased author to gather material for a biography. This book is a page-turner for a variety of reasons: the impatient, running and out of breath manner of the narrator, with occasional foreshadowing; the mystery of finding out about the author and vaguely suspicious things happening in the town; the marvellous way Carroll has with describing the tugs and pulls, the unevenness, in romantic relationships. Land of Laughs was published hardcover by Viking, and paperback by Ace Fantasy in 1983 (which is strange, since the Viking makes no mention of a fantasy restriction); bookstores may still carry the Ace. The Voice of Our Shadow has again some amount of obsession of the living for the dead, except this time it's a closer relationship--the living have some guilty feelings about having caused the death. The narrator is a writer who's comfortably well off due to royalties from a play based on a short story he wrote about his brother who died in an accident as a teenager. His brother was a bizarre bully who tormented the younger boy who wanted to be loved by the big brother. The narrator goes on to become to be a solitary and largely unloved (although unconscious about this) adult writer living in Vienna, until he meets a dynamic couple who have recently moved to the old city. The Voice of Our Shadow I've only seen in paperback by Ace. In both of these Carroll demonstrates a talent for describing romantic relationships of the less-than-live-happily-ever-after type. Needless to say, I've only described the stories up to the point where they begin to get a little more than interesting... L S Chabot ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA USFail: DEC, LMO4/H4, 150 Locke Drive, Marlborough, MA 01752