Voice of Our Shadow (1983)

yes people again. ( )

This may be my least favorite Jonathan Carroll book ever. The whole book seemed like it was getting really interesting, going in a really interesting direction (though ignoring the plot synopsis on the back), and then in the last five pages, he brings it around to a conclusion that makes very little sense in the context of the story. This was only his second book, but it reads more like an early effort than his first (Land of Laughs, which is actually one of my favorites) did. ( )

[Three and 1/2 stars]
Another swift and interesting read from Jonathan Carroll, with another self-centred, intelligent, not-entirely-sympathetic-but-all-too-human protagonist. Not as polished or creepy as Land of Laughs, but with the same facility for description and nuanced study of character and the permutations of relationships. But most of all, I'm actually still trying to digest that ending! I can't decide whether it's as abrupt and out of the blue as it feels (just as the character has no room to think in those crucial last three pages, neither does the reader), or if it makes sense thematically. A bit of both, I think, and the whole book now definitely requires a re-read. ( )

Joe Lennox, a young American working in Vienna, still full of guilt over the death of his brother over a decade before, becomes friends with an older married couple, Paul and India Tate, who are also ex-pats. The story starts off like a non-genre novel and nothing even slightly impossible happens until the half-way point when it becomes an unusual ghost story. Towards the end, I was wondering how the story could ever be wrapped up in the last few pages, and then there was an unexpected twist and it was all over in two pages - a truly surprise ending!

Unfortunately I took an instant dislike to the protagonist which I never got over. None of his relationships rang true, although this could well be explained by the surprise ending, or possibly due to those relationships being all in his mind. Could it be that Joe was mentally ill, and rather than being pursued by vengeful ghosts, he was torturing himself with his guilt over having caused his brother's death Thinking back over it, whenever he was with India and Paul, and later with Karen, they always did things by themselves, never with other friends, so no-one else Joe knew (not that he seems to have known many people) would ever have met them, so they could well have been figments of his imagination. Even the funeral was poorly attended and I didn't think he spoke to anyone else there either. ( )

Very different from the other Carroll book I have read, Sleeping in Flame, this one has a surprising, dark twist at the end. ( )