Also one of his better ones (not that he has really bad ones, just very good ones, excellent ones, and OMFG ones). Definitely not a case of sophomore slump; like The Land of Laughs, one of those endings you don't see coming and are kind of clobbered by, even though it all makes a kind of sense once you've thought about it.

Good and spooky. Jonathan Carroll has a wonderful way of grounding you in the beginning, then slowly pulling you into his world of fantasy. As a result, I buy into whatever world he constructs. I didn't like this one as well as some of his other books I have read, it took me awhile to push through the first bit, but was glad I did. This is a very dark book, but worth the read.

Before I wrote down my thoughts on this book, I had a quick look through some of the other reviews just to see what other people felt about it. It seems that this book is quite controversial, particularly for the twist at the end which turns everything on its head. Many of the reviewers didn't think it made sense, that it was out of context with the rest of the story. I have to say that I couldn't disagree more! It makes perfect sense and I liked the ambiguity of possible interpretations that it...

Joseph Lennox is a young, successful writer who is emotionally haunted by a childhood incident in which he somewhat accidentally caused his older brother's death. Against the backdrop of Vienna, the lonely young man meets an older couple with whom he develops an obsessively immersive friendship... I don't want to give too much away, but the scenario (about half way through the book) develops into a fairly tense and horrific ghost story. (although the book cover bills this as fantasy, I would def...

Carroll always varies between 4 and 5 stars for me. This one gets 4, since the characters are so cruel to each other that I found no one to "root" for. However, the story is entrancing as usual, and is one of the strongest in terms of tearing down the veil between what we consider "real" and what lies underneath. It's just that what lies there is horror in this novel.

For a Jonathan Carroll novel this one was pretty mellow and understated, which is a good thing in my opinion. I'm sometimes exhausted by the anything-can-happen-shtick where nothing makes sense. This one was fairly uneventful, yet interesting and quite moving. Also creepy and disturbing, which is always nice.

OK, Karen! I just finished getting caught up on reviews so I could justify reviewing this one.Many of my followers likely know of my love affair with Jonathan Carroll books. His writing enthralls me, his imagination consumes me, and his creativity and utterly shameless writing style are something I aspire to. Every world hat he creates is something wholly new and unexpected, yet at once so familiar as to be slipped into like a separate skin. Reading his books is an experience, and an addiction.

This didn't work for me. In fact, it just doesn't work at all. Ghost story, love story, bildungsroman... it is unclear what Carroll was trying to accomplish but he was not successful on any of those levels. It worked on only one level and I will get to that briefly. My main complaint is the clunky, wooden, ridiculous dialogue. No one talks like this, no one has ever talked like this. No one has ever called their illicit lover "Sporty" or "Champ." At times the dialogue actually harms the story du...

4.25I took to this book right away. The characters are well developed and the story is pulling. I’ve read several of Carroll’s books, and he lures you in knowing that you’re expecting magical realism, but he makes you wait; and when you’re enjoying the story so much you’ve forgotten about MR, BAM, he blows your mind. He’s a go to for magical realism along with Murakami and Neil Gaiman.

I quite enjoyed reading this, though I thought Land of Laughs was vastly superior. However the ending was so shockingly awful that that it's put me off reading any more of Carroll's books. It's truly one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read. It would be laughable even in a straight to video horror movie!

This was a fairly disappointing read for me, because I was very impressed with The Land Of Laughs. In a lot of ways, Voice Of Our Shadow mimics the format of that book; the first half to two-thirds of each book tries to pass itself of as "literary fiction," only introducing genre elements towards the end of the book. An unlikeable main character, a twist ending, and of course, an affair (as R. Scott Bakker said, the affair is to literary fiction as dragons are to fantasy). The main difference be...

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...

I really like Jonathan Carroll. Voice of Our Shadow has the feel of a classic literary novel about human relationships...and then it gets creepy. Loved it. Crazy ending.

I very very very rarely call a book rubbish, but this one is it. It was so completely 'male' in a bad way. And I really can't find any redeeming thing, anything that I liked. The female characters are paper thin (complexity-wise) and such cliches that I can't even. It felt completely unimaginative in every way. It's also racist, at some point when Joe is in New York, he witnesses a white woman sexually assaulted by a black man (that's the only description of him and it *is* mentioned that he is

There is something strangely off-kilter in the several books by Jonathan Carroll I have read so far. It is usually a bizarre turn of events, and sometimes it works for me, fits in perfectly into the bigger picture after a while to get used to it. Oftentimes it feels as if two different books have got mixed up at the printer's, and the twists, when they come, disturb in a way that does not sit easily with me. Perhaps this is exactly what the author strives for. The novel 'Voice of Our Shadow' see...

An easy read and a rather deceptive book. It starts off a bit like a Stephen King novel, with the well realised horrible and sadistic elder brother Ross tormenting the younger one Joseph/Joe who is the novel's protagonist and first person narrator, and the tragic accident which inevitably results. Joe then suffers years of guilt though this doesn't stop him using the character of his brother and his brother's wrong-side-of-the-tracks friend as characters in a short story, which becomes a best se...

It's a good read, which falls apart at the end quite drastically. What was he thinking?? Note my use of two exclamations marks. The characters of the elder brother and his friend were so spot on. I've known boys just like that: bored, bright, almost loveable, brilliant in their perceptiveness and not afraid to use it in any way that entertains them, often cruel but sometimes dazzlingly good fun. The plot involves a young man, Joe, and an older couple, Paul and India Tate. He is charmed by them a...

I picked this up from a local libray sale only because it is in the Fantasy Masterworks series - I had never heard of the book or the author before. Now that I've read it, I'm not sure that I would call it fantasy. Yes, there are ghosts and vengeful spirits, but at the end of the book, I was more convinced that the protagonist had just gone mad rather than being haunted by his dead friends!!It's Joe's story. A writer, fleeing to Vienna to escape the memories of his dead brother, he meets the eni...

"Did I love her? No, I didn't. When we made love she often said things like "Love-yes! Love-oh!" and even then I felt uncomfortable, because I knew I didn't love her. As far as I was concerned that was all right, because I cared for her, wanted her, and needed her in many different, ever-increasing ways. I had long ago given up on the possibility of finding someone I could love totally and endlessly. Sometimes I tried to convince myself that what I felt for India was the only kind of love Joseph...