"Jonathan Carroll's novels sit astride the boundary between genre fantasy and magical realism, between fairy stories with their vindictive morality and the laid-back contemporary novel of the mundane."

A reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement said that at some point about my favorite writer.

No other author can so fully transport me into his stories. For me, reading or even rereading a Jonathan Carroll novel or short story is a quasi-religious experience. It's the closest I ever come to an enervated state of exultation. I float around for hours to days after with bits of his worlds clinging to me until bit by bit, like smoke or finely spun sugar, they drift away leaving me back in the mundane.

Mundane is an important word to me when I think of Carroll's books. They always start with the mundane. They're written in a style that is actually quite mundane. But his mundane prose is sneaky. It's an incredibly comfortable style of writing that fools you. It invites you into the world he's creating and by the fact of its mundane nature makes you comfortable. You slip into a story that could perhaps be your own. And then just when you're wearing the life of a character that you feel you naturally know, the dog curled on the foot of your bed turns, yawns and speaks some terrible truth to you. Or you meet God. Or perhaps you meet yourself.

In Carroll's worlds, the mundane turns on you. His comfortable prose is almost a trap of sorts. It reassures you. And delivers you somewhere... different... somewhere difficult perhaps. You step sideways into a world that's the same as this but different. And then that vindictive morality often comes into play. And in the end, there's never an easy resolution. Often, there's no resolution at all. This frustrates some of his readers. To me, it's one of the great joys of his books. It's what makes them drift about me for days on end afterwards.

I really can't recommend anything more highly than his books. I urge you to find one and read it. Only a few are easily available. Of those, I most like THE WOODEN SEA, THE LAND OF LAUGHS, and SLEEPING IN FLAME. If you can find a copy of the out of print OUTSIDE THE DOG MUSEUM, that's my favorite.

Did I mention the names of his books? They're amazing too, I think. There's also:

THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS

KISSING THE BEEHIVE

AFTER SILENCE

FROM THE TEETH OF ANGELS

VOICE OF OUR SHADOW

BONES OF THE MOON

A CHILD ACROSS THE SKY

Such mundane words twisted into such small beautiful phrases.

Go find one of his books... or visit http://www.jonathancarroll.com/