Bones of the Moon (original 1987; edition 2002)

Young wife and mother Cullen James has the perfect life. Her husband Danny is charming, loving, and loyal. Her best friend Eliot, a gay film critic, is quirky, endearing, and devoted to them. And her infant daugher, Mae, is lovely and fulfilling. Of course, not everything is entirely perfect. Danny’s successful basketball career in Italy was ended by a severe knee injury and the family was forced to move back to Manhattan. Cullen loves her daughter, but cannot help but wonder what the child she aborted before she ever began a relationship with Danny would have been like. And Alvin Williams, a teenage boy in their building, had a psychotic break and killed his mother and sister with an axe—and now insists on writing disturbing letters to Cullen from his institution because he says that she was the only one who was ever nice to him.

Meanwhile, Cullen has begun to have a surreal series of connected dreams in which she and a young boy named Pepsi…her son in this dreamworld…search the fantastical island of Rondua in company with three talking animals, trying to collect the five Bones of the Moon so that Pepsi can become Rondua’s ruler. Cullen is torn between enjoying her dreams and loving her dream-son, and being worried by their vibrancy and strangeness.

When the world of her dreams and the world of her waking begin to coincide in strange ways, Cullen must face the consequences of her past decisions in order to preserve the present life she’s built. ( )

The book I read bore very little resemblance to the plot described in the blurb.
I found the timing of, and the novel seemed superficial - lots of interesting themes, but they suffered from not being explored properly, piled upon each other as they were.
The first part of the story tells the story of the romance between the main protagonist and her husband. The dialogue is awful, and the romance unbelievable - probably in part due to the fact that I didn't care for, or considered the characters believable.

The fantastic element of the story, while nothing like the description, are interesting. The themes, however, are facile and lacks depth.

The whole agonising over a long ago abortion was pretty annoying too - yet another male having an opinion on something that is none of his business. At least the protagonist realised that her concerns were hers, and should in no way be imposed on anyone else. ( )

Quite a wonderful book with moments of beautiful writing. I read this because Neil Gaiman borrowed heavily from it in A Game of You - probably my favorite story arc from Sandman. Neil definitely owes a huge debt of gratitude to Mr. Carroll for giving him the outlines of this story.

It is audacious for a man to write about abortion and its impact on a woman's life and later motherhood. It is too easy for such a man to come off as judgmental, but Carroll shows that imagination can take you many places. The narrator of this book, Cullen, lives in a world where the line between dreams and reality are blurry at best. She is warm and genuine and struggling to find who she is in the aftermath of her abortion, subsequent whirlwind marriage, and the birth of her first child.

I loved the way Carroll refuses to treat the dreaming world differently from the "real" world - transitioning back and forth between both much as we all do in our own lives. It's a good story, too, although I found the ending a bit abrupt. I'm looking forward to reading more by this author - he's got a great imagination and there's not nearly enough of that in the world. ( )

Cullen James (who is a woman, believe it or not) is happily married to Danny, is being romantically pursued by a famous movie director named Weber Gregston, has a fabulously (and stereotypically) gay best friend named Eliot, corresponds with her teenage axe-murdering former neighbor, and has serial dreams about a land called Rondua, in which her son (named Pepsi) is attempting to collect the five Bones of the Moon with the aid of giant animals Martio the camel, Felina the wolf, and Mr Tracy the dog. The dreamworld and the real world interweave in strange ways, from Cullen's bizarre magical powers to the appearances of Jack Chili and Sizzling Thumb. I was disappointed at the lack of description of Cullen's real life, such as her travels to Europe and her experiences living in New York City. There were a lot of "white room" experiences for me. On the other hand, I actually quite liked how little Rondua was described, leaving most of it up to the imagination of the reader. There is no explanation as to what exactly the bones of the moon actually are, nor any number of other strange things, like the Hot Shoes or Fire Sandwich - just like in real dreams. The bizarre names created all kinds of interesting mental pictures for me. I wish, however, that there had been a little bit more plot. Most of the dream sequences felt more like I was hearing them second-hand than experiencing them with the narrator, and the "twist" ending felt more like a cheap shot than anything truly shocking. But all in all I can't say that this is a bad book. Just a very strange one. A nice change from the ordinary. ( )

Carroll continually enthralls and amazes me. His style reminds me of Charles DeLint, but with a noir flavor. ( )