White Apples (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest..." (more)
Key Phrases: chaos animals, water sandwich, Vincent Ettrich, Bruno Mann, Tillman Reeves (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Vincent Ettrich is in a tight spot. He has died and been brought back to life to help save his unborn son from evil and chaotic forces who want to prevent this son from becoming the savior of the universe. Sound bizarre? Welcome to the surreal and metaphysically massive novel White Apples by Jonathan Carroll.

Following up the equally strange but widely acclaimed The Wooden Sea, Carroll paints on an even wider canvas with White Apples. In Carroll's world, humans are key threads in a giant tapestry that is being woven as life is lived. But there are dark forces at work who don't want the weaving to continue as is and Ettrich, his beloved Isabelle, and their sentient fetus find themselves standing in the way. Their struggles to merely understand what is happening to them and to stand tall in the very face of darkness makes for a humorous, touching, and thrilling tale with, as is expected, a big bang of an ending. But the most marvelous aspect of the novel is not its far-reaching, mind-blowing metaphysics. It's the wonderfully tragic love story of Vincent and Isabelle that keeps this flight of fancy grounded and beautifully human. --Jeremy Pugh

From Publishers Weekly

God is a tile mosaic, chaos is a fat man in a cheap blue suit and death is a learning experience for the deceased in this glib metaphysical fantasy from the author of The Wooden Sea. Vincent Ettrich, a likable rogue and womanizer, is shocked out of his daily routine one day by the memory that he died a short time before. With the help of a guardian angel, Vincent discovers that he has been summoned back to existence by the spirit of his unborn child with lover Isabelle Neukor. Vincent's death has inculcated him with information crucial to the harmonious ordering of life, and he spends most of the novel desperately trying to recall what he learned and avoiding avatars of chaos determined to stop him. The story is a classic Carroll romp in which personified states of mind achieve independent life, characters interact with quirky incarnations of aspects of themselves, and bizarre metaphors ("When you're dead they teach you how to make a water sandwich") are illuminatingly literalized. But Vincent's puzzlement over his quest and the iconic roles others play in it demands talky explanations that interrupt the spontaneous flow of fantasy and suggest the author has overreached in his stabs at inventive symbolism. The novel boasts its share of the fresh perspectives on life and love that Carroll's fans have come to expect, but readers may finish it feeling a bit like Vincent, more instructed than entertained.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (September 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765303884
• ISBN-13: 978-0765303882
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,135,602 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for everyone, but, September 19, 2003

By	"excession" (Westfield, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Apples (Paperback)

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.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surreal Philanderer Seeks Beautiful Non-Committal Women, November 5, 2002

By	Eric Franklin (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carroll's latest is one of Carroll's best., September 2, 2002

By	James Rovira "jrovira" (Orlando, FL US) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.