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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cory Doctorow review in BOING BOING website, 10 Nov 2008
Jonathan Carroll's latest novel, The Ghost in Love is the latest of thirteen genuinely magical fantasy novels in which the author makes magic the way Fred Astaire danced: effortless, simple, wondrous.
In the Ghost in Love, Ben and his girlfriend German have just broken up a long-term relationship that seems to have been as wonderful as love can be (Carroll has a special gift for bringing happy family relations to life). Now they are on the outs, and sharing custody of Pilot, their shelter-dog, and every time they meet to swap the dog, their hearts break anew.
Ben should have died the day he got the dog, when he slipped on ice and broke his head. But he didn't. So the Angel of Death sent Ben's ghost, Ling, to earth, to investigate why the universe has stopped obeying its divine destiny. Ling is hopelessly in love with German, and the ghost is also a fantastic cook (as is Ben), so whenever German is due to come over, Ling spends the whole day cooking elaborate, invisible meals for her, while chatting morosely with the dog (all ghosts speak Dog).
That's all in the first few pages. Then it gets weird.
Carroll's standard formula for his novels is to introduce us to wonderful people living magical blessed lives, lives so achingly rendered that you want to crawl into the page and snuggle under the covers with them. Then he smashes their lives like sand-castles, and his wonderful people fall apart while magic unmakes them, rewriting the rules of their world to reveal hidden truths about love, family, self-regard, self-loathing, and other emotionally charged subjects.
In Ghost in Love, Carroll does this again, but even moreso, using a kind of dreamlike fluidity to constantly rewrite the rules of his world and its magic as evil and good tear apart the lives of Ben, German, Pilot and Ling and the people around them. The story grows ever-more existential, allegorical and weird as the pages fly past.
But it's all handled so gracefully that the dream-logic never falters. Carroll is the omnipotent god of his characters and situations, and he is totally in control of every variable, so that we trust him throughout, even though he never plays fair.
And the message, the conclusion in the end? Without spoiling things, I'll say this: The Ghost in Love contains genuinely profound and illuminating truths about the way that we love others and ourselves, and about the power of owning up to your bad deeds, and about the danger and wonder of nostalgia for our simpler pasts.
I've read and enjoyed all thirteen of Carroll's novels, and this one is going right on the shelf with the others, and will occupy the same oft-visited part of my mental landscape wherein dwell his other magical books.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One Heck of a Story, 11 Mar 2009
Pilot leads a dog's life, but that's not surprising as he's dog. He was the one who had been in the pound the longest when Ben Gould came to adopt him. The day Ben died, but didn't die. Pilot is a mixed breed, who finally found a home a dog could be comfortable in, with humans who loved him and fed him well. But the human's broke up and now they share him. He spends half his time with Ben in his nice airy and well lighted apartment, which he also shares with a gourmet cooking ghost. Ben doesn't know about the ghost, not yet. And the other half of his time he spends with Ben's ex, German Landis, a tall girl who lives in a dingy below ground apartment she doesn't like.
Ben and German are in love, but stuff just seems to get between them. Stuff like Ben not dying when he was supposed to and that ghost who happens to be in love with German. But they don't know that, not yet.
Also, unknown to them is the fact that there are evil forces afoot who want to do away with Ben and interestingly enough, the Angel of Death is not one of them. These forces will stop at nothing, they want Ben destroyed. But destroying Ben is not going to be so easy for them, because there are these very tough like earless, ghost dog things which abound around Ben when he's in trouble. They protect him from the bad.
Okay if you're still with me you can see that this is not your ordinary mainstream novel, but it's very good. Very different, but very good. Jonathan Carroll knows how to draw you into a story filled with weirdness and get you to accept it willingly. Ben and German are ordinary people about to be thrust headlong into a very extraordinary situation and how they deal with it makes for one heck of a story.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Love death and dogs, 16 Jan 2009
Somewhere between Martin Millar and Neil Gaiman, there's the gently whimsical world of Jonathan Carroll.
And he's in full-force in "The Ghost in Love," a deeply unconventional little love story that floats along in a mellow, quirky haze. As if Carroll's warm, whimsical style weren't enough, the story is populated with angels, vagrants, ghosts, talking dogs reborn from past girlfriends, and a man haunted by a celestial computer bug. Yes, it's at least half as odd as it sounds.
After adopting the rather fatalistic dog Pilot from a shelter, Benjamin falls, cracks his head, and dies.
Or rather, that is what SHOULD have happened. His ghost is informed by the Angel of Death that due to a bizarre error, he hasn't died -- and until further notice, the ghost is to hang around and observe. But Benjamin's failure to die is having a bizarre ripple effect on the world -- the Angel is wounded, and time seems to warp around Ben.
The strange events of his death (and subsequent life) become clearer when Pilot (whose past life connects him to Ben) tells his owner everything. Past selves and mysterious verzes all appear around the three humans and the talking dog -- which is made even more complicated by the fact that Ben's ghost Ling has fallen in love with the vibrant German.
"The Ghost in Love" is one of those stories that is really hard to classify -- it happily straddles fences between magical realism, pure fantasy, love stories and ghost story. And Jonathan Carroll has a knack for coming up with unique plots, such as: what if a man who didn't actually die was being haunted by his own ghost? Ah, such strangeness.
The main flaw with Carroll's story is that it's saturated with past selves and memories, so the point where it gets kind of confusing. Fortunately the world he spins up is wonderfully whimsical -- it's full of ghosts, angels, maddened vagrants, city streets, verzes, and meditations on what it is to have free will and be truly alive. It's a place where talking dogs can see roaming illnesses roaming the streets.
And he's able to bring it to life with gentle humour and a sense of whimsy, as well as wonderfully vivid writing ("His eyes looked like dirty coins. His skin was the colour of old books that were once wet"). Yet he can also come up with some subtle creepiness, such as when German meets the aged, forgetful version of her ex-boyfriend from half a century in the future.
Unsurprisingly -- since both Ben and Ling are in love with her -- German is the big warm heart of the book. She lives for today, enjoys everything she can, and has a fun open min. Ben is a bit more laid-back and quiet (even when exploring his own childhoo), while Pilot the dog adds a mildly sardonic edge to the proceedings.
"The Ghost in Love" is a truly sweet, introspective little fantasy, full of confusing problems, bright colours and women who live for today.
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