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
While on holiday in Sardinia Ian McGann goes
to sleep one night--and meets Death in a dream. It promises
to answer any of McGann's questions, but if he fails to
understand the answers he will have to pay with his
life.
In Hollywood the famous actress Arlen Ford realises at the height of her career that she is lost in her life, and must drop out of it if she is to save herself. Giving up everything, she flees to Europe where she meets war correspondent Leland Zivic. From the beginning their relationship is astonishing and all-consuming. Arlen has been waiting for this man all her life.
And in Vienna the terminally ill Wyatt Leonard suddenly discovers that he has the ability to raise the dead.
How all three of these extraordinary fates converge is the story of Jonathan Carroll's remarkable From the Teeth of Angels, a novel which goes deeper and farther than any of the author's previous work. It is both dangerous and essential.
[ Featured Reviews ]
Playing 20 Questions With Death by Tom Dehaven for the New York Times
[ Other Reviews ]
From Booklist , 05/01/94:
When travel agent Ian McGann, touring in Sardinia, dreams about Death personified, it begins a series of events that involves a discordant group of people in locales ranging from Vienna to Los Angeles: McGann's subsequent strange encounters result in injuries to his body which may prove fatal. The lives of terminally ill Wyatt Leonard and Arlen Ford, a movie actress seeking peace in European retirement, soon become entangled with McGann's fight with Death. As the fates of these three converge, a war correspondent, looking in Vienna for surcease from the anguish of war-torn Yugoslavia, enters their lives. The struggles of all to understand Death and their contention with Death's cruelties lead them to a dreadful culmination, a fight for their lives and souls. Carroll writes with grace and style, weaving the different strands of his story to their frightening shared climax.
From Kirkus Reviews , 03/01/94:
While heaven must be stormed and knowledge wrested from Death or torn from the teeth of angels, the living are terribly scarred in this guided dream, a novel less grounded than the author's After Silence (1993). In Sardinia, Death comes in dream after lucid dream to Ian McGann. Death, unable to stand Ian's muddled questions and stupidities, gives him a chest scar, a palm scar, and worse. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Wyatt Leonard, a gay TV host who lives with the widowed Sophie Chapman, is dying of leukemia when he meets Death in a novelty store and gets some edged warnings. After her brother Jesse disappears in Vienna, Sophie dragoons the dying Wyatt to go there with her. Already residing in Vienna is actress Arlen Ford, whose early retirement from the screen has been pleasantly interrupted by a romance with war correspondent/photographer Leland Zivic, a meld of Robert Capa, Indiana Jones, and St. Francis of Assisi. Sophie's lost brother turns out to have been having Death dreams of his own and has gone off in pursuit of Ian McGann. Now back in Vienna, Jesse confers with Wyatt and exchanges visions with him. Then, in a pastry shop, Wyatt runs into Emmy Marhoun, a New York editor who died three years earlier after being kicked by a horse. Horribly, she doesn't know that she's dead: ``Hell for her was walking around in life almost alive but not knowing the difference anymore.'' But matters are not what they seem for Wyatt, Ian, Arlen, and Jesse. It turns out that Leland is Death, just toying with Arlen until she bores him, at which point he reveals to her not only her entire life but also the thoughts of others about her. Another draft may have deepened Death into a stronger figure able to draw richer responses from Arlen and Wyatt. But, although a bit thin, this is Carroll's fearless best since going mainstream. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"Flouting the conventions of form in a way horror novels may usually only dream of, Carroll's eighth novel takes him further into the mainstream, where his ideas continue brilliantly to subvert expectations. A gruelling, cleansing emotional journey that asks all the big questions, never skirts the serious issues and cannot be recommended too highly."--Guardian
"Tricky and undeniably high-minded, Carroll's novels demand, and deserve, to be taken seriously. In From the Teeth of Angels, Carroll has fashioned a stark, cunning parable about the excruciating fact of our own eventual deaths. This is a fine and harrowing and beautiful work of fiction. Here's hoping that Carroll's reputation continues to grow."--New York Times Book Review
"Carroll has maintained and even surpassed his earlier heady standards with From the Teeth of Angels. It stands as one of that increasingly rare breed of novels which virtually demands the reader turn back to the first page to re-live the story immediately. Highly recommended."--Interzone
"This tale of death and redemption grabs you by the short hairs and won't let you go. Jonathan Carroll has crafted the ultimate metaphorical tale of life and death, psychic loss, friendship and alienation."--James Ellroy
"Deeply satisfying...a struggle between good and evil as monumental as anything in Milton (with whom Carroll shares an ability to make evil seductively beautiful and intelligent)."--Michael Moorcock, New Statesman & Society
