Something About My Life that I Already Knew

“I love to read a book which, not only I enjoy, but suddenly they say something about my life that I already knew but I’d either forgotten it or I’d never framed it that way. As a friend of mine calls it, it’s the Oh factor. You feel like you’ve been punched in the stomach. That’s right or I never thought of it that way or whatever it is. So when I’m writing, a lot of the time I’m writing not necessarily to elicit the Oh, but to say to the reader, Have you ever thought about it this way? I don’t know if this is the right way or this is going to lead to the right way, but have you ever thought about it this way? And if that leads to the Oh, then I’m happy.”

~ Jonathan Carroll, in conversation about his new novel, The Ghost in Love, with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW’s Bookworm (12.04.08)

“We first meet the Angel of Death in a local cafe as he takes a meal with ghostly Ling. But Death plays only a peripheral role in all this. As he explains to Ling, Ben's fate ‘is out of our hands. Plus, we're fascinated to see what will happen to him now ...’ You'll be fascinated too, if you're alive to the experience of immersing yourself in the most seriously entertaining writing of the day…Whatever the genre, Carroll creates novels so fascinating and intelligent and seriously delightful that no other writer in English can touch him.”

~ Alan Cheuse, from “Death’s Absence, Writ Large and Small,” All Things Considered (12.09.09)