Bones of the Moon

I find myself less enamoured of Carroll's characters than I used to be - I really admired the way they looked at the world, but now it all seems a bit self-regarding and silly, which does not, actually, detract much from the books, it turns out, because they really do seem like the sort of people these things would happen to, if that makes any sense. The mixture of almost affected whimsy and emerging nightmare is what drew me to Carroll in the first place, and it still packs a wallop.

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

There is something incredible about Jonathan Carroll. No matter how strange the plots of his books are, no matter how absurd the happenings within them are, he makes them seem real. "Bones of the Moon" is an incredible book that ingeniously weaves together the dreams and realities and how they all intertwine. Everything fits, and yet not so well that both stories don't still contain their own hearts and abilities. Everything works in the end.

This was the first book I picked up by Carroll. A friend had read a review of Sleeping in Flame, and saw that this was the first in the so-called Answered Prayers series. From the moment I started reading it, I took every opportunity to read it, whether long stretches or spare minutes. It inhabited my mind when I wasn't reading it. And this is an odd thing to say about a book with some flaws, and yet even when reading the flaws I got the impression that Carroll had possibly left them in on purpose. There's the plot, the ending of which you can see from early on (but there's a sense that it's not the plot that you should be concentrating on), the central character and her overuse of exclamation marks, and sometimes the dream-sequences show more grated somewhat. Having said that, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and left me wanting nothing more than devoting a weekend to reading his next book. show less

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 show more 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. show less

For a Carroll novel, the message is pretty straight forward: abortion is bad, you'll pay for it in the end, you'll sacrifice something for your decision.

I'm not going to dip my toe into the pond of opinions on this subject. I'm not trying to rile anyone; I'm just commenting on the book. That's the background of the story: Cullen dreams each night about the fantasy land where her aborted son still lives. It's up to the reader to decide if the world is real, or if she's just essentially carrying on therapy for herself in her head. I'm pretty sure where Carroll stands on this and it isn't the side he usually takes.

There isn't nearly enough explained about the world; Carroll introduces all these interesting ideas and places, but it's all show more background. You never get to see the Wooden Mice or know where the Hot Shoes came from etc. For that matter, why on earth did he name the kid Pepsi??

Still, Carroll books are always an interesting ride because he writes like no one else. show less