White Apples

by Jonathan Carroll

Book Overview

The author of "The Wooden Sea" returns with a captivating tale of life, death, and the realm between as a man is brought back to life with no idea why.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765303884
• ISBN13: 9780765303882
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Surreal Philanderer Seeks Beautiful Non-Committal Women

Vincent Ettrich was once dead. Now that he's returned to life, he has discovered that he's soon to be a father to a child the world will desperately need. Isabelle, the mother, is the one that brought him back. Pursued by destructive forces, and helped along by benificent guardians (including the unborn fetus itself), the two attempt to protect their unborn child and themselves from death, chaos, and a sinister henchman known only as "King of the Park". Somehow this all makes much more sense in the book.Jonathan Carroll is one hell of a good writer and I look forward to reading some of his other work. Not one to be cubby-holed into a genre, this book spans fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and a beautifully portrayed look at metaphysics without so much as batting an eyelash. The dialog is written wonderfully. The scenes between Vincent and his women really sparkle. I tore through this book in a day - which I haven't done for any book in quite some time. While the book is not without a couple of loose ends, the ambience more than makes up for it and makes this one you should place high on your reading list.

a bit different from his other novels

I'm a total Carroll junkie and have read all of his books. This one struck me as quite different -- less dependence on the usual devices of elevators that take you to different places and more emphasis on dealing with the big questions, life and death. Carroll combines several mystic/religious traditions in defining his own cosmology of Chaos versus the Mosaic of life, all while creating his usual memorable characters and compelling love stories. In some ways this book was more satisfying, or perhaps more optimistic -- love conquers for a change. The idea of the unborn son having the power to save the world is a nice tie in -- in short, Carroll journeys farther from the "normal" path (not that anything is ever normal in a Carroll book!) and takes us on a memorable ride. Carroll remains one of the most innovative writers of our time -- don't miss his other books either!

From Pepsi to Anjo

With a deftness that can only be described as sheer brilliance, the author has written a novel that in its interweaving and metamorphic structure intentionally mimes its own thematics, the world of the word reflecting the writer's own ongoing cosmogony. The ingenuity of this device, combined with the author's ability to pull it off, frankly leaves one awed.

way out fantasy

Out of control womanizer Vincent Ettrich recently died, but in spite of his many women no one truly mourns his passing. However, ironically the philandering Vincent is a key player in the grand cosmic scheme. Thus, he is brought back to life to perform a key role that will enable the great plan to occur. He had left behind besides a wife, a pregnant lover. That unborn child is the critical person in the universe to insure the future goes according to the grand plan.Though the fetus Anjo needs his mother Isabelle, Vincent is to teach his offspring what he has learned from his death. The problem is Vincent remembers nothing of his death or what it is he should be teaching his son. If he fails to do his part of the mission, Anjo will lack the knowledge needed to insure implementation of the plan leading to a failed future yet Vincent cannot accept that he died and came back.When it comes to way out fantasy where readers peeping through the looking glass at death see a certain signpost ahead, it means Jonathan Carroll. His latest spin is all over the place as the story line is not linear in any sense with strange flashbacks that make the time continuum seem concentrically circular. Yet somehow the talented Mr. Carroll provides an insightful, weird, but entertainingly different perceptive on life, death, and the free will vs. pre-determinism debate that is not for everyone except those fans who want something unusual in their novels.Harriet Klausner

Carroll's latest is one of Carroll's best.

Carroll creatively appropriates the Orpheus/Eurydice myth with a twist in this new novel -- a woman returns to the land of the dead to retrieve her husband and the father of her child. Carroll's descriptions of living death -- of the experience of death itself -- is as haunting as the story itself is touchingly humane. It's ultimately a love story, a love story that makes a very real, human, even flawed love shared by real, human, flawed characters a love that's stronger than death or the impulse to control. In this novel, like others, Carroll stretches our conceptions of reality so that we can properly see the mundane.