Customer Reviews

White Apples

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

If you're reading this, it's likely that it is for you. Jonathan Carroll is hard to categorize, and this book is relatively typical of his style and theme. The book's protagonist doesn't realize that he's dead (I'm not giving anything away -- it's on the back cover), and White Apples follows the series of revelations and transformations he's about to undergo as a result of the chain of events his growing "enlightenment" provokes.

The main complaint that people have about this novel is that it seems incomplete or fails to give the reader a tidy package at its conclusion: don't be put off by those criticisms, rather embrace them. Carroll doesn't write easy fiction with simple answers. If you like to ruminate about characters and themes after you finish reading, then this novel (and other Carroll novels) is for you.

White Apples comes with a reader's guide at the end that would be especially handy if you're part of a group or if you like to get an idea of what others make of the novel. I've become increasingly disenchanted with mainstream fiction and the predictability of many authors ... if this description fits you as well, it's probably time to start reading the likes of Jonathan Carroll, China Mieville, A.M. Homes, George Saunders, and the other writers who show that fiction can still be surprising.

Vincent Ettrich was once dead. Now that he's returned to life, he has discovered that he's soon to be a father to a child the world will desperately need. Isabelle, the mother, is the one that brought him back. Pursued by destructive forces, and helped along by benificent guardians (including the unborn fetus itself), the two attempt to protect their unborn child and themselves from death, chaos, and a sinister henchman known only as "King of the Park". Somehow this all makes much more sense in the book.

Jonathan Carroll is one hell of a good writer and I look forward to reading some of his other work. Not one to be cubby-holed into a genre, this book spans fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and a beautifully portrayed look at metaphysics without so much as batting an eyelash. The dialog is written wonderfully. The scenes between Vincent and his women really sparkle. I tore through this book in a day - which I haven't done for any book in quite some time. While the book is not without a couple of loose ends, the ambience more than makes up for it and makes this one you should place high on your reading list.

Vincent Ettrich, the suave ladies man, goes on a date one night only to learn that he has died and come back, but can't remember anything about it. His task in a nutshell: remember everything and pass the knowledge of the afterlife to his unborn son. Each chapter of White Apples contains a surprise. Carroll won't let a dozen pages slip past without throwing out a shocker. In the beginning, I was intrigued; as the book wore on, it became grating. I wanted to like this book, but it was just too annoying. The characters were interesting, but unlikable. The bad guys were undefined and incomprehensible, and the same could be said for some of the good guys. New "rules" were constantly popping into existence to justify or limit sudden miracles or newfound powers. The characters did a lot of explaining to each other, because nothing made sense. Through it all, the reader suffers. By the end, I gained the strong impression that Carroll was making it all up as he went along, without ever having a clear idea of where he was going. That's great as a creative exercise, but not as something to sell to others in the guise of a novel. Avoid.

I'm a total Carroll junkie and have read all of his books. This one struck me as quite different -- less dependence on the usual devices of elevators that take you to different places and more emphasis on dealing with the big questions, life and death. Carroll combines several mystic/religious traditions in defining his own cosmology of Chaos versus the Mosaic of life, all while creating his usual memorable characters and compelling love stories. In some ways this book was more satisfying, or perhaps more optimistic -- love conquers for a change. The idea of the unborn son having the power to save the world is a nice tie in -- in short, Carroll journeys farther from the "normal" path (not that anything is ever normal in a Carroll book!) and takes us on a memorable ride. Carroll remains one of the most innovative writers of our time -- don't miss his other books either!

Not everyone likes Jonathan Carroll. The irony (and generally helpful fate) of this is that it's not that hard to find many of his works in used bookshops for very little money, when, arguably, they should be worth considerably more.

Most fans or semi-serious readers of Carroll pretty much cut their teeth on Land of Laughs, which has recently been reissued in paperback.

I won't review Laughs here, but suffice it to say if you like this novel, then you will pretty much like most anything else he has produced, and there is quite a lot to examine and explore.

What really did it for me was Voice of our Shadow, which perhaps has more relevancy here if you really want to do a serious comparison of plots between past works and this most current work, here published by Tor - I'll leave that critical job for a future more dedicated reviewer to tackle.

I like Carroll. I like the fact that he challenges our assumptions of reality - I like the way he pushes the envelope of fantasy, and yeah, I kind of like him because he's a bit of a snob, literary, sexual, artistic, you name it, and doesn't make too many bones (ahem) about it.

Recently, though, more naysayers are appearing. It's easy to jump on the bandwagon, and to be fair, there are some points to be made.

It probably started around about the time From The Teeth of Angels was published, where Carroll felt it necessary to stretch his exposition, possibly to a point where even his best "non-plausible yet real" plotting couldn't hold things together without some serious mindbending or looking the other way.

And yet, that kind of is the point, though there is now so much Carroll stuff it is now beginning to be possible to make judgments on whether or not works are "more" or "less" like classic Carroll, assuming such judgments are helpful.

If you really wanted realism, you can always find any one of a number of earthly grounded, historically accurate stuff that will do that trick for you (read: Bernard Cornwell).

Or, if you prefer, Stephen King also has a new novel which will again give us the same dose of the enjoyable and perhaps predictable, albeit in a new package (Like a Buick8). BTW, I'm not convinced he's done. We'll see.

There are recent examples where Carroll is losing his touch. Marriage of Sticks didn't really quite do much for me (I didn't finish it) and I missed The Wooden Sea, so I can't completely fill the arc from a TRULY critical standpoint.

But I have read pretty much everything else he's written, and it's hard to fault his oeuvre for the most part.

To summarize, White Apples starts out as vintage Carroll. But our previous reviewer does have a point - there is an AWFUL lot of exposition and seemingly very little action in the middle of the plot.

However, Jon does flip things around a little bit by giving you the first emotional shot between the eyes pretty much right from the start, and then unwinding it in a metaphysical past/future/pseudopast arc.

It's a neat idea, however, Carroll may fare better in future by focusing more on the backdrop visuals rather than with the in-your-face elements

When reading this novel some people might get a bit disrupted, or even thrown by the relative lack of details surrounding the unwinding of these story elements - (coin side one)

(coin side two) but then, isn't that the POINT? Aren't we supposed to be feeling Ettrich's personal journey from that limited perspective? How is an editor supposed to resolve THAT?

For me, it's the unstated stuff that generally tends to win fans (and perhaps our disgruntled first reviewer?) over, and there's really not much of that left over here, despite a very engaging journey which for many fans, will pretty much fit the bill.

It's up to you to decide which side of that coin you fit on, because, as with most Carroll novels - you either like it/get it, or you don't.

Simple as that.

Carroll creatively appropriates the Orpheus/Eurydice myth with a twist in this new novel -- a woman returns to the land of the dead to retrieve her husband and the father of her child. Carroll's descriptions of living death -- of the experience of death itself -- is as haunting as the story itself is touchingly humane. It's ultimately a love story, a love story that makes a very real, human, even flawed love shared by real, human, flawed characters a love that's stronger than death or the impulse to control. In this novel, like others, Carroll stretches our conceptions of reality so that we can properly see the mundane.

When I finish reading a truly terrible book (a rarity), I am usually able say to myself: "Well, at least I learned SOMETHING." But this book held absolutely nothing for me.

White Apples was recommended to me because I enjoy atypical, offbeat books. In addition, I had read Jonathan Carroll's praise for M. John Harrison's Light in my copy of that exemplary novel.

Now don't get me wrong: Carroll is a clever observer of the human scene (though too often he DESCRIBES when he should SHOW). He knows how to make believable characters, and about a quarter of the way through White Apples I had a good feeling about the book's direction. At a certain point, however, things become incomprehensible. Others contend that things shouldn't make sense because the White Apples universe is being affected by Chaos, and the focal point is Vincent and Isabelle's true love, which conquers all.

But the layers of plot that support the love story are distracting and untenable under any scrutiny, and so the decent heart-tugger this could have been quickly becomes a headache.

The concept of the "Eef," for example, was interesting. . . but it felt forced and unbelievable that a certain character was the embodiment of this "Eef" because this character had felt like a personality in his own right up to that point. Why this character was "stuck" in a hospital was also never adequately explained. And more questions remain. How does a certain female character return to life after being horribly killed by the forces of chaos? And why is this the last time she will see Vincent? Why is every scene involving action or violence so painful to follow? Why are many concepts such as the life-force of "numen" introduced and then never used again? Why does the extent of Anjo's power seem to fluctuate whenever it is convenient?

I could go on ad nauseum. It is my opinion that this book is a disorganized mess that uses the concept of chaos as an expedient cover for poor writing.

I hope I helped someone by posting this.

After hearing about Jonathan Carroll's work I decided to give him a try, starting with White Apples. What lay within the pages was a haunting tale of life, death, and after life commingled with some very intriguing ideas on the universe.

If you're a fan of weird fiction check out Carroll because he is indeed a magician, pockets bulging with tricks, mesmerizing and entertaining. He slowly pulls you along and then, WHAM, he turns it on, full throttle intensity of the highest order. All the while retaining an amazing amount of literary integrity; it's as if Twain, Poe, and Dahl were mixing up a tale during an all night peyote session.

"Chaos is not your friend."

I just put the book down five minutes ago and am still awestruck at the scope of the world it left in my mind. Never have I read a book with such a unique and different view of the afterlife. Beautiful, captivating story. I read it in a matter of days.
I did not, however, understand why Vincent needed blood if he was dead. If he had no pulse, his heart didn't pump.
I am willing to overlook that in the face of how well written the book was. Bravo, Carroll.

Full disclosure: this review belongs in the I-love-Jonathan-Carroll-but category.

Obviously anyone who adores Carroll's unique brand of metaphysical surrealism will want to read WHITE APPLES. The problem with the book isn't so much that Carroll has created unsympathetic characters this time around (though the adoption of third-person narration does distance them from the reader), nor that Carroll's beliefs about the afterlife are becoming drearily New Age (though they may well be). The problem is that Carroll's writing is not consistently up to his best.

Carroll's work has always been defined as much by its metaphysics as by its surrealism, but in his very best novels--THE LAND OF LAUGHS, THE WOODEN SEA--the metaphysics is folded expertly into the plot. Large swaths of WHITE APPLES are given over to metaphysical exchanges. During these intervals not only does interest in the plot lag, but interest in the characters does too: very little, at least in the course of these metaphysical exchanges, distinguishes WHITE APPLES's protagonists from dozens of previous Carroll creations. In the book's most relentlessly metaphysical passages, Vincent, Isabelle, Coco, Bruno, and the enigmatic Tillman Reeves are merely cardboard cut-outs. This, combined with the aforementioned third-person narration, is not good.

The other problem with WHITE APPLES is that many of the more surprising and/or surrealist moments lack the shockingly strange verve of Carroll's best work. Coco Hallis's odd dietary predilections aren't anything we haven't already seen in, for example, the TERMINATOR movies, while Isabelle's exchanges with her grandmother feel like outtakes from other, better Carroll novels. Carroll's views about the afterlife get a few new twists here, but by and large he's rehashing older material (though not as egregiously as he did in his recent contribution to CONJUNCTIONS magazine's New Fabulism issue).

Only in two splendid scenes--a confrontation with the forces of Chaos at the local zoo, and Bruno Mann's journey to consult with the enigmatic but powerful King of the Park--does the writing in WHITE APPLES approach Carroll's best. I'm almost willing to recommend the book based on these two scenes alone. But readers looking for a more consistently engaging entry into Carroll's worlds should stick with THE LAND OF LAUGHS or THE WOODEN SEA.