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    White Apples
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    White Apples
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    White Apples
    Ebook352 pages5 hours

    White Apples

    By Jonathan Carroll

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Vincent Ettrich, a genial philanderer, discovers he has died and come back to life, but he has no idea why, or what the experience was like. Pushed and prodded by strange omens and stranger persons, he gradually learns that he was brought back by his one true love, Isabelle, because she is pregnant with their child-a child who, if raised correctly, will play a crucial role in saving the universe.

    But to be brought up right, he must be educated in part by his father. Specifically, he must be taught what Vincent learned on the other side-if only Vincent can remember it. On a father's love and struggle may depend the future of everything that is.

    By turns quirky, romantic, awesome, and irresistible, White Apples is a tale of love, fatherhood, death, and life that will leave you seeing the world with new eyes.



    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJul 1, 2010
    ISBN9781429971683
    Unavailable
    White Apples
    Author

    Jonathan Carroll

    Jonathan Carroll (b. 1949) is an award-winning American author of modern fantasy and slipstream novels. His debut book, The Land of Laughs (1980), tells the story of a children’s author whose imagination has left the printed page and begun to influence reality. The book introduced several hallmarks of Carroll’s writing, including talking animals and worlds that straddle the thin line between reality and the surreal, a technique that has seen him compared to South American magical realists. Outside the Dog Museum (1991) was named the best novel of the year by the British Fantasy Society, and has proven to be one of Carroll’s most popular works. Since then he has written the Crane’s View trilogy, Glass Soup (2005) and, most recently, The Ghost in Love (2008). His short stories have been collected in The Panic Hand (1995) and The Woman Who Married a Cloud (2012). He lives and writes in Vienna. 

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    Reviews for White Apples

    3.5/5

    193 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What would you do if you wake up and you're dead?You go about your normal day, until you start being confronted with more and more strange indications that you are in fact no longer living. This story is a mindf*** I think it almost became a philosophical ride, but it dipped more into the supernatural to me, and I just don't know how to explain it. If you like quiet stories that have just a few elements of "what was that?" this may be the book for you.
    • 4/5
      This isn't really science fiction. Nor is it fantasy - it sits some place between the two. As for the book itself - it was interesting to read - especially the authors explanation for God. The story itself is okay - its well written, but at times, the two main characters were too whiny - too needy. Also, the evil, Chaos, really didn't make a whole lot of sense in action.Either way, I'm glad I read it, but its not a book I would read again.
    • 3/5
      Very interesting - wildly funny, albeit very confusing. Not bad at all, and worth investigating later.
    • 4/5
      I went up and down on this. As always with Carroll, the writing can be wonderful, as in this passage in the first few pages: "She was small and had the thin carnal face of a naughty angel...One with a holy expression, but something else in that look, something wanton. It says the model for this heavenly spirit was probably the artist's mistress."For quite a while, I feared this was yet another of those well-written sagas of male/female relationships with a tincture of fantasy: the main protagonist has died before the book even starts. Then, without getting into spoilers, the book becomes cosmic pulp fiction with stakes as great as anything E E Smith put together. Some may call it fantasy, but Carroll wants a logical flow more like SF. The writer I was most reminded of was R A Lafferty, particularly in a key scene in a barbershop in the latter half of the story. For much of the book, Carroll masterfully manages to tell a surreal tale without causing the reader to give up and accept whatever happens next. Eventually, too many new rules are revealed, and there are few too many interchanges of the form "how do you know?" "I just do!" The ending is fine, just a bit too mechanical.Recommended with the caveats noted.
    • 4/5
      Vincent Ettrich died of liver cancer a month or so ago, but now he is alive again and no-one in his life seems to have noticed that he died, including him. It is only when he meets a friend of his called Bruno Mann who is also dead, and finds Bruno's name tattooed on his new girlfriend Coco's neck that he begins to realise that something strange is going on.The plots of Jonathan Carroll's fantasy novels are always original, so you can never guess what is going to happen. It's just a pity that his protagonists are so unlikeable. I didn't really care about Vincent, and actively disliked Isabelle, his on-off girlfriend and the love of his life.
    • 4/5
      Vincent Ettrich thinks he's just living his normal life, until he realizes that he's already died. And that the woman he's seeing may be something other than human. Then he finds out his other girlfriend -- the one who really matters to him -- is pregnant. With a baby who talks to her. And from there things get really strange.Jonathan Carroll's writing has this amazing dream-like sensibility to it, a feeling of being based in dream logic, that is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. It's imaginative, well written, and full of rich symbolism, and yet, I have to admit, halfway through I found myself muttering, "Could you just explain what the heck is going on now, please?" But then, of course, whatever explanations and resolutions we're given are also mystical and dreamlike. I appreciate what Carroll's doing here, I think, but it's hard to say for sure whether it really works for me or not. I think I may be a little too attached to real-world logic to appreciate it completely.Also complicating matters is the fact that I never could quite decide whether I liked any of the characters or not, particularly the main character. His attitudes towards women range from disgusting to oddly touching, and, disturbingly, it was sometimes difficult for me to decide which was which. Which is not actually a bad thing; it makes for complex and human characterization. But it certainly did not help me feel any less conflicted about the novel as a whole.
    • 3/5
      Vincent Ettrich has died and come back from the dead but doesn't know it so keeps on with his womanizing ways until he discovers something distinctly odd about his latest conquest--she has the name of a dead friend tatooed on the back of her neck. This book has more twists and turns than a roller coaster ride and reads like an adult version of "Alice in Wonderland." Around every corner, the circumstances are reinvented and the characters change. It's an enjoyable read for fantasy fans and has, as a bonus, a treasure trove of highly quotable commentary on life.
    • 3/5
      What a crazy ride of a book! Vincent Ettrich is an unrelenting womanizer who wakes to discover that he has died and has been reborn. But for what reason? With the help of vivacious guardian angels and helpful unborn children, Ettrich learns Chaos has found the joys of consciousness and refuses to give these up, with devastating potential consequences for the world. Definitely an Odd Duck!
    • 3/5
      This was the first Jonathan Carroll book I read and I liked it so much I bought The Wooden Sea and ordered all the others from the library. It's a very strange book but beautifully written and compelling as are all the others. He is certainly a writer who knows how to do his job and from looking at his website he is a writer who enjoys speaking to his readers and takes care to treat them well.So I apologise to him for sticking at three stars for White Apples. It was the zoo scene that mainly did it, coupled with the fact that I didn't know about Library Thing when I had only read this one book of his. I find reading about animal abuse very difficult and in this book there is an awful death of a baby elephant so reading the next book (in which a dog is set on fire) made me think its sort of a theme to his books and is the only thing about them I don't like. For a similar reason I have given up on Richard Layman (always a rape scene in his books). I haven't given up on Carroll though and think it is a shame he isn't more widely known and available in bookshops. He has been part of my post it note campaign to make more people aware of him so hopefully that will make up for the three stars.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. Jonathan Carroll snares you with his beautiful use of the English language. He manages to take a thoroughly unlikeable character and make the reader not only root for him, but also, in the end, like him. Just an eensy bit. Whit Apples is the story of Vincent Ettrich, a man who slowly comes to realize that he has been brought back from the dead. No one remembers that he was dead, and as he tries to sort out what is going on he learns that he has been brought back for a very specific purpose (and if I told you what that was, the way the back of the book does, you would just get confused. So read the back of the book if you want to know, but be warned. It's confusing)
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. It's one of the most beautiful and unusual love stories I've read. And Carroll's ideas about God, death, love, and Chaos make for fascinating reading. It's a pretty quick read too, one you really get caught up in and don't want to put down. See if this first paragraph doesn't grab you right away: Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. It uses all of you but is not careful with what is most fragile or irreplaceable. If it breaks you, it shrugs and moves on. Without asking, Wonder often brings along dubious friends: doubt, jealousy, greed. Together they take over; rearrange the furniture in every one of your rooms for their own comfort. They speak odd languages but make no attempt to translate for you. They cook strange meals in your heart that leave odd tastes and smells. When they finally go are you happy or miserable? Patience is always left holding the broom.
    • 5/5
      This is probably my favorite of Carrolls books. The scene at the zoo is one of the greatest ever written. It will give you chills. Also a reverse Orpheaus tale.