- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (July 18 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0765304015
- ISBN-13: 978-0765304018
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 14.2 x 2.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 363 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #437,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
in the sandbox with Wittgenstein,
By "jackdonathan" (Taylors, SC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: White Apples (Paperback)
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.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Annoying,
By Silas Traitor (The South, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: White Apples (Paperback)
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.
3.0 out of 5 stars
great mainstream novel,
By "cheshirecat69" (the land of laughs, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: White Apples (Paperback)
I agree with a previous review that this is an excellent book but not at all as surreal as I would have liked. But for a mainstream author, Carroll is one of the best. Very imaginative, yet still appeals to the masses. But if you are thinking about buying this book because somebody told you it was extremely surreal and subversive you might want to check out the anti-mainstream surreal author Carlton Mellick III.
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