When I was first striking out on my own to figure out what I liked to read, I stumbled over a Jonathan Carroll rec on ChickLit. I read From the Teeth of Angels and became enchanted. Over the years I kept an eye out for Carroll novels in used bookstores and on book swap sites, and eventually managed to snag Sleeping in Flame.I guess I was expecting the same kind of book-fog to roll over me as I read this one, but it never happened. It's still got the good bits I remember from Carroll's writing, a...

i collect jonathan carrolls books in foreign languages. he is a wonderful writer, and his books always have great covers, regardless of language. which means i have about 50 books i will never be able to read. it also means that if anyone wants to buy me presents... im just saying...

The second Jonathan Carroll book I read and just an absolutely incredible literary adventure. Kind of a retelling of something out of Grimm. Highly recommended.

Walker Easterling falls in love w/ Maris only to find that he's in a timeless, endless loop of reincarnation, w/ a magic, jealous midget for a father. A modern sequel/retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin tale.Unlike "Land of Laughs," which I loved, this story felt uneven. There were too many loose ends - why did Walker's magic manifest itself the way it did (for example, the sea monster)? Were we to believe his father tortured him from life to life because he was jealous of romantic love? What purpo...

I put this book on my "to read" shelf a long time ago, and when I needed to hurriedly choose something at the library, I picked it almost at random, without really remembering what it was supposed to be about. As it turns out, that was the perfect way to experience this book, so I'm not going to put too many spoilers in my review. At first I thought it was just a straightforward love story set in Vienna, and even then I was enchanted with it because of Carroll's great conversational writing styl...

Another absolutely brilliant book by Carroll. For a minute there, I thought there was going to be a happy ending..

While this is a book review, it doubles as a happy anecdote for you lovely people. I signed onto goodreads a day or so after Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods and the Sandman series, posted an article from his blog entitled: "Who is Jonathan Carroll and why should you care?" Find the link here: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...It was a few weeks after I read American Gods when I read this article. I thoroughly enjoyed Gaiman's work, so I started to follow him on goodreads. This blog po...

I decided to try this author after hearing many recommendations from Neil Gaiman. After conducting some research this one came up as a good one to start with.Our man character Walker is a divorced screenwriter who lives in Vienna and falls in love the minute he meets Maris. He feels connected to here instantly upon first meeting her. Only then do the most strange things start happening to him as he remembers things from past lives. To save his Fiancee he must come to terms with his past and it s...

Walker Easterling is an actor/screenwriter living in Vienna with his model-girlfriend, Maris. As time goes by, in typical Carroll fashion, the mundane turns bizarre as Walker begins to discover traces of his past lives and that he is more than a mere orphan. When Maris becomes pregnant he must find out the truths about his past lives and comes to terms with them in order to save the wife of his fiancee and their child.Reincarnation stories often have a tendency to be a little too Carlos Castenad...

old Up, Now HOld em UP. This book here has some of that specialmeaning to me. Back in My nothing but Horror days. I gave this guy atry. And how Barker let me know that there was reason to plan onreading other books beside Kings 5 million pages of Phone books. Thishere one, let me know that I wanted more then just SHock n Awe. Its aGreat Yarn and a Genre Buster, its that Good!Its a Modern take on/and the true story of RumbleStilskin. But fromthe view point of the stolen child. And reincarnated in...

Walker lives in Vienna and falls in love with a beautiful girl. But, slowly, mysterious things are happening to him and he is remembering incidents from past lives. How does this related to the mysterious Papa and what will happen to Walker's girlfriend as someone seeks to destroy Walker and his life? Walker begins to develop some new magical powers - clairvonce and phoetic dreams and the like and he doesn't know what to do. As he dreams of old lives, he starts to wonder at who he really is and

Strangeness, magical realism, a complex, curious, surprising plot and some moments of beautiful insight and lovely expression. If that sounds alluring, you’ll probably enjoy the book, if you need more clarity up front about the kind of book it is and what the story is like, who the characters are, what kind of other books it could be compared to, this is probably not the book for you. It’s like a book you haven’t read before, even if you have read Carroll. It’s rather what he does. The unfolding...

A story of fairy tales and reincarnation, of the power of names and the power of love.Nothing fantastical happens in the first third of the book, which concerns the budding romance between two expatriate Americans living in Vienna. But then Walker Easterling has a strange encounter in a cemetery, a flash of pre-cognition at an airport and is present when a mythological beast surfaces off the Californian coast, the story picks up pace.I kept looking at Jonathan Carroll's books in the bookshop, bu...

The fourth of Carroll's novels and the fourth I've read, but not the best. As with all of them it suffers from a rushed off-the-wall ending, probably more than most, but that's not my main problem with it. I found the story very uneven with lots of 'kitchen sink' things thrown in that didn't really gell with the story. The protagonist, as in most of those I've read, is a man telling the story in first person. Walker is a small time film actor who has moved into screen writing with the help of hi...

As I said in my review of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry now and again we read the perfect book at the perfect time in our lives. Sleeping in Flame was a similar serendipitous choice, given to me by my boyfriend as an early present.Jonathan Carroll more than any other author lures me into the worlds he creates. The mixture of wonder and cynicism in his work draws me deeper and deeper into the magical realism of Vienna and Prague, Rondua and half-recalled dreams. The more I visit the mind

i don't know if it's because this is the third jonathan carroll book i've read, or if i'm getting progressively crazier, but the ending of this one made sense to me. :)it could also be that sleeping in flame is a little more straightforward than the other two i've read. there are curve balls still, non-sequiturs yes, but all-in-all i feel like he's much more focussed on love, as a prism, with facets of it everywhere. there is a primary improbable love story (carroll's protagonists are frequent f...

Loved it, as I've found I do every book by Jonathan Carroll. This is the third of his I've finished in a row (the first being Land of Laughs and The Wooden Sea). I can't recommend his stuff enough. But I will say, now three books into his bib, my dreams are getting stranger. I looked up JC online and sent him a brief note saying I enjoyed his work but it's giving me strange dreams. He surprisingly wrote back, saying "strange dreams are good for the digestion. Carry on."I dig this dude. A lot.

Sleeping in Flame by Jonathan CarrollAnswered Prayers Sextet Book #24 starsWhat's it About?:Walker Easterling is a retired actor turned successful screenwriter living in the Vienna of strong coffee, fascinating friends, and mysterious cafes. When he falls in love with Maris York, a beautiful artist who creates cities, his life becomes alive in fantastic and unsettling ways. As Walker's love for Maris grows, his life gets more and more bizarre-he discovers he can see things happening just before

Walker Easterling, divorced American screenwriter living in Vienna, meets the woman of his dreams, Maris York. Their attraction is immediate and goes far beyond physicality; they are connected on a deep level from the first minute of meeting. At the same time, some strange things start happening. Not just strange- things that should be impossible. But in this world of Carroll’s, magic is not only possible, but not even very remarkable. What alarms Walker and Maris is that bad things start happen...

The whole book has a wonderful ambience. The love story is soft and sweet, the mood is rich and slightly dark, the plot unfolds slowly as you are drawn into the characters and mystery. I loved everything about this book except for that last quarter of it where it felt like the author ran out of interest and started rushing things. The book lovingly meanders through the story and then suddenly things start happening and aren't explained. It's still a good fun read, and it's worth reading because