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Read The Wooden Sea (2002)

The Wooden Sea (2002)

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Rating
3.81 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0765300133 (ISBN13: 9780765300133)
Language
English
Publisher
tor books

The Wooden Sea (2002) - Plot & Excerpts

It's rare these days that a book "has me from hello" (to paraphrase a cheesy line from a *urp* Tom Cruise movie), but this one did. Check out the first two paragraphs: "Never buy yellow clothes or cheap leather. That's my credo and there are more. Know what I like to see? People killing themselves. Don't misunderstand; I'm not talking about the poor fucks who jump out windows or stick their sorry heads into plastic bags forever. No "Ultimate Fighting Championship" either, which is only a bunch of rabid crewcuts biting each other. I'm talking about the guy on the street, face the color of wet lead, lighting up a Camel and coghing up his soul the minute he inhales. Good for you, Sport! Long live nicotine, stubbornness and self-indulgence."Let's have another round here, Jimmy!" croons King Cholesterol down at the end of the bar. He with the rosy nose and enough high blood pressure to lauch him and his whole family tree to Pluto. Gratification, mass, texture. The heart attack that'll nuke him will last a few seconds. The cold beer in thick mugs and perfume of grilling T-bone steaks are forever until he dies. It's worth the trade-off. I'm with him."I think I'm in love. This, of course, is from The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll, an author who has been around for a while but somehow escaped my notice, something I'm very happy to correct. The book quickly gets very weird, something I very much approve of--a reviewer described a point in his books when "the floor turns to Vaseline and you're looking for a handhold". My kind of book. And the only thing I love more than discovering a new author is finding out that they wrote 12 other books besides the one I'm reading and loving. Score another one for that Waterstone's list. I'm beginning to think they may really know what they're doing there.

Esta es la segunda novela que he leído de este autor y pienso que no será la última. Después de leer “The land of laughs” (la leí en inglés y ese es el título original) y ahora con “El mar de madera”, puedo, al fin, clasificar con seguridad el género literario al que pertenece la obra de este autor norteamericano: la fantasía surrealista. Es por eso que quedé enganchado desde la primera vez. Siempre me han gustado las pinturas e imagenes de este tipo. Incluso las películas de Buñuel, que son del tipo surrealista me encantan( aunque solo he visto dos). Pero siempre me encontraba con el dilema de no saber describir o ponerle nombre a este tipo de literatura, que se distingue por hacer uso de imagenes extrañas o se pudiera decir oníricas. Algo casi como el “weird fiction” del que tanto se habla. Es un tipo de fantasía... rara; con imagenes y escenas salidas de un sueño. O de una pesadilla. A mí me encanta el género fantasía, pero no en general. Me explico: ese tipo de fantasía a la que pertenece El señor de los anillos, con sus orcos, elfos y todo lo demás, nunca me ha gustado. Ni un poco. Lo siento, sé que es casí una blasfemia, habido caso que Tolkien es considerado como el padre de la fantasía moderna. El tipo de fantasía que disfruto es la del tipo de Algernon Blackwood, la de Jorge L. Borges o Adolfo Bioy Cásares. Es la fantasía (y terror) de William H. Hodgson. Y la de Jonathan Carroll. Me he convertido en uno de sus fans. Recomendado.

What do You think about The Wooden Sea (2002)?

This is one of the rare books that causes you to pause and ask yourself "What am I reading?" Not once, not twice, but a minimum of at least three times. The Wooden Sea is not a book for everyone; not even a book for most people.Carroll's writing is utterly shameless. He writes for himself entirely, and what comes out is a set of characters incredibly well-defined. His setting, his characters, the surrealistic nature of his plot and universe itself all come off as incredibly reasonable. He bumps the cliché and then promptly subverts it - he nears a piece where a lesser writer would falter, and hurdles it with ease.Jonathan Carroll, while not for everyone, seems to be for some people perfectly. I feel quite lucky to be among that crowd.
—Hilary

What a strange, lovely ride. The humor in the narration captured me from the starting line, and things did not stop or slow down at all from there. An intricate plot but Carroll makes it readable and easy enough to follow, timejumps and all. I bought this book for $3 at HPB a few years ago and let it idle on my shelf for a while, never quite sure if I wanted to dip my toes into a slice of a genre that is so historically hit or miss for me. Now that I've zoomed through the novel in a few days' time, I'm glad I dipped.Relatable characters, poignant suffering, humor that made me chuckle out loud several times, warm fuzzies executed without excess cheese, and a wildly original concept as a whole. If I had to offer any criticism it would be that the ending felt both slightly spoonfed and kind of abrupt. Yet I understand why the message was spelled out so thoroughly, as some readers may not pick up on it throughout the book, so it didn't really bother me. Spoonfed it was, but Dickensian it was not. A few sentences of spelling out and then it moved on. I'm okay with that. The point is: I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be reading more of Carroll's work.To finish, here's one of my favorite quotes from the book that - no lie or hyperbole - brought some sting to my eyes. There's a wealth of simple lines that cut straight to the feels throughout the novel, but this one got me especially:"I'm frightened that one day I'm going to lose all this and I won't have loved it enough. Remember that - love this all the time."Yowza. My feels.
—Alli

The story starts off with a one-eyed, three-legged dog expiring like an old wounded warrior, and then things get stranger and stranger. “The Wooden Sea” is a novel I picked up thanks to a recommendation in the “2003 Nebula Awards Showcase” as an example of the direction the fantasy genre was heading. And “fantasy” here means fantastical, not medieval. I think if I had to give just one label to this book, it would be “surreal.” The book starts off odd, then gets strange, and then gets truly weird. The lead character, a police chief in a small town, was extremely well rendered, and shows some real growth both prior to the timeline of the novel and within the novel as well. The novel does suffer from something I think a lot of modern surreal novels suffer from, though... Things are somewhat explained by the end, and the explanation seems contrived and a bit too tidy. Somehow, the magic of the bizarre needs to be left as mysterious magic, and when it gets explained, it’s somewhat of a let-down. (I got this same feeling from Stephen King’s recent behemoth, “The Dome,” but Carroll’s reasoning here is significantly better than King’s was.)But if you like strange, give this one a shot!4 of 5 stars.
—Steven Cole

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