The Ghost in Love
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
"I envy anyone who has yet to enjoy the sexy, eerie, and addictive novels of Jonathan Carroll. They are delicious treats—with devilish tricks inside them."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Neil Gaiman has written: "Jonathan Carroll has the magic. He'll lend you his eyes, and you'll never see the world in quite the same way ever again." Welcome to the luminous and marvelously inventive world of The Ghost in Love. A man falls in the snow, hits his head on a curb, and dies. But something strange occurs: the man doesn't die, and the ghost that's been sent to take his soul to the afterlife is flabbergasted. Going immediately to its boss, the ghost asks, what should I do now? The boss says, we don't know how this happened but we're working on it. We want you to stay with this man to help us figure out what's going on. The ghost agrees unhappily; it is a ghost, not a nursemaid. But a funny thing happens—the ghost falls madly in love with the man's girlfriend, and things naturally get complicated. Soon afterward, the man discovers he did not die when he was "supposed" to because for the first time in their history, human beings have decided to take their fates back from the gods. It's a wonderful change, but one that comes at a price. The Ghost in Love is about what happens to us when we discover that we have become the masters of our own fate. No excuses, no outside forces or gods to blame—the responsibility is all our own. It's also about love, ghosts that happen to be gourmet cooks, talking dogs, and picnicking in the rain with yourself at twenty different ages. Stephen King has said that "Jonathan Carroll is as scary as Hitchcock, when he isn't being as funny as Jim Carrey." Jonathan Lethem sees Carroll as the "master of sunlit surrealism." However one regards this beguiling original, two facts are indisputable: It's tough being a ghost on an empty stomach. And The Ghost in Love is a triumphant return.
Reviews with the most likes.
It's been six years since I read one of Jonathan Carroll's wacky stories. This one is every bit as wacky as the other two I've read. There's a man, Ben, who supposed to have died from an accident but he didn't. His ghost is sent down to take over but finds she has nothing to do since Ben is still alive. Ben's ex-girlfriend, German, is sharing custody of their dog, Pilot. The ghost falls in love with German. Ben wants to get back together with German. But then things start getting wackier... talking dogs, the Angel of Death, revisiting scenes from memories, ghosts becoming visible, and so forth. Reading this phantasmagoria you may get a little confused by what exactly is going on, but it's best just to go with it. It'll all (sorta) make sense (using its own logic) in the end. It's hard to classify this author's work so I'm not going to bother. It's just different and often thought-provoking.
