Bones of the Moon by Jonathan Carroll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
2.5 Stars (wish we could do half stars)
I wanted to like this book more than I did, and the initial reviews and comments made me quite excited. I think I was not quite sure what I was getting into and at times I feel like the book does quite know what it is either.
Cullen James is a beautiful, smart woman who had an abortion when she was younger, has moved on to marry a great guy and eventually land in New York after a brief time in Europe. Her marriage is strong and realistic. Cullen and her husband have a baby girl She then begins to have a series of dreams that are vivid, linear and fantastical. In her dreams, she is on a heroes quest with a group of amazing animals and her son, Pepsi.
This book has a divided set of reviews depending on what you categorize it as. Some people call this magic realism (a term I despise) and some call it fantasy. I find myself in the second camp and I do not think it grasps things very well. My problem is that the fantastical world – about 50% of the book- is not well realized and flat. It is actually more surreal. It is in dreams so literally all bets are off and I am cool with the weird. As a matter of fact, it could have gotten weirder and I would have been happier.
My other beef is the pacing. I found it off and not really finding a rhythm to fall into. Both the real and fantastical portion had waves that clicked, that moved and felt like there was something happening. Then the opposite would happen. For such a short work, it felt much longer to me.
Johnathan Carroll
I did enjoy the actual prose those. I think the minimal prose of Jonathan Carroll was strong. He made a few words do some heavy lifting. I think the characters in the real world were rich and felt tangible. But the characters in the fantastical were flat and felt like cut-outs. I just could not care about them and their quest.
