bones of the moon
black cocktail
a child across the sky
outside the dog museum
the panic hand
kissing the beehive
the land of laughs
the marriage of sticks
from the teeth of angels
sleeping in flame
voice of our shadow
the wooden sea
[ Featured Reviews ]
T12/15/2000 BOOKLIST *Star” Carroll, Jonathan. The Wooden Sea. Feb. 2001. 304p. Tor; dist. By St. Martin’s, $23.95 (0-312-878230). Police Chief Francis McCabe is happy with his life: he has a good job, a loving family, and a beautiful home in the small town where he grew up. But when Old Vertue – the world’s strangest dog – dies in his office, McCabe’s comfortable life is disturbed by a series of puzzling and seemingly unconnected events. A husband and wife mysteriously disappear, and their house is burned to the ground before McCabe can investigate. He buries Old Vertue, only to discover the dead dog’s body in the trunk of his car the next day. He begins having visions involving his past and future selves, and an enigmatic stranger reveals that McCabe has a week to live. The more bizarre things get, the closer the police chief comes to understanding the larger pattern that’s governing his life. This delightfully eerie story eschews all small-town stereotypes and eludes categorization: it’s not exactly fantasy or science fiction, in spite of the fact that both God and aliens appear in the cast of characters. In sum, what Carroll does is use a skillful mix of surrealism and mundane detail to pose metaphysical questions. – Bonnie Johnson |
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| © Booklist 2001 |
