White Apples (Paperback)

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.