Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.
Chargement... The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories of Jonathan Carroll (2012)par Jonathan Carroll
Books Read in 2019 (2,024) Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
ContientThe Panic Hand {stories; UK} par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) Black Cocktail {novella} par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) Mr. Fiddlehead {story} par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) Uh-Oh City {novella} par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) Friend's Best Man [short fiction] par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) The Sadness of Detail {story} par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) A Quarter Past You {story} par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) The Panic Hand {story} par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) The Dead Love You [short fiction] par Jonathan Carroll (indirect) Prix et récompenses
Nominated for a 2012 Bram Stoker Award and a 2013 British Fantasy Award: Thirty-eight extraordinary stories from award-winning author Jonathan Carroll For more than thirty years, Jonathan Carroll's writing has defied genre conventions. Known for his novels--including The Land of Laughs, Bones of the Moon, Sleeping in Flame, and many other compelling and often surreal stories--Carroll has also created an eloquent body of short fiction. The Woman Who Married a Cloud brings his stories together for the first time. In the title story, a matchmaking effort goes awry and leads one woman to a harrowing moment of self-discovery. In "The Heidelberg Cylinder," Hell becomes so overcrowded that Satan sends some of his lost souls back to Earth. And in "Alone Alarm," a man is kidnapped by multiple versions of himself. By turns haunting, melancholic, and enchanting, Carroll's richly layered stories illuminate universal experiences, passions, and griefs. Described by NPR's Alan Cheuse as "so richly imaginative, so intellectually daring," The Woman Who Married a Cloud is essential reading for Carroll fans and short-story lovers alike. This ebook contains an exclusive illustrated biography of the author including rare images from his personal collection. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
Est-ce vous ?Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing. |
The reasons he is one of my favorite writers are found throughout this book. He has a way of describing even the most mundane of things in a way that, while not making them less humdrum, make the reader want to smack his/her hand down on the table and shout, “YES! That’s exactly it!” As in the story, “The Sadness of a Detail”: “Arguing with the children, a trip to the dentist, then endless shopping for invisible things – toilet paper, glue, salt. Things no one ever knows are there until they’re gone and are then needed desperately. An invisible day where you exhaust yourself running around, doing thankless errands that are necessary but meaningless: the housewife’s oxymoron.”
Housewife or not, we’ve all had that kind of a day, some more than most, and yet it is as if Carroll has taken all of our collective frustration/exhaustion and distilled it down into its purest form.
In the story, “Mr. Fiddlehead”, one of the characters expresses beautifully the “before” picture of her life. “But before him, I had never thrown anything away, caution included. I’d been a careful reader of timetables, made the bed tight and straight first thing every morning, and hated dishes in the sink. My life at forty was comfortably narrow and ordered. Going haywire or off the deep end wasn’t in my repertoire, and normally people who did made me squint.” All, if not almost all, of Carroll’s stories have a “before” section. The part of the story where the reader is allowed to settle in a bit. Have a look around, start to get a sense of the place. And just when the reader starts to get comfortable, a sentence sneaks by where something is just a bit off. Something happens or a character says something that doesn’t quite fit. That first subtle tilt of the picture that the reader is still trying to make sense of when the whole thing starts to move and change in a way that is delightful and disturbing and that makes Carroll’s work one of a kind.
“If he could never know what it was like to be truly human, at least he could be as kind as a human being and give this woman something they desired.”
These stories are just as much about errands as they are about Hell. Characters complain about being unable to meet the right man just as they fall in love with imaginary childhood friends. They mourn the loss of a great love with equal weight as they rejoice a friend’s soul turning up in another person’s body.
In this collection of stories, the loss of a loved one in the strongest theme. As is the desire to find a great love. “How do I say without words: I’ve been looking for you all my life but didn’t know it until five minutes ago? How do I tell her everything when I can’t tell her anything? The face is a very bad linguist. How many words are in a smile?”
While so often in our mundane word, the only solution for such a loss is time. In the fantastical worlds of Jonathan Carroll, time, space, emotions, reality, and humanity – all are up for grabs. Anything is possible.
The delicate blending of these worlds is fascinating to me. Now that I’ve read so much of his works, I always try to peek around the next corner – try and predict when the “AHA!” moment is coming. But he is a master at drawing the reader so fully into the story – say with snarky (and oh so true) social commentary such as, “She constantly wondered why people volunteered their skin as a billboard to tell the world they were clichés, unoriginal, or worst of all – they just wanted to be like everyone else.” – that guards come down and the reader is surprised once again.
This collection of stories was delicious. Maybe a longer collection that I might have chosen – only because I never want to grow tired of these mystical realities – never want them to start to blur together – but delicious nonetheless. ( )