For my first review, I have chosen one of the best novels I have ever read, a book I have forced on so many people, given as a gift so many times, one would think it was my own.SLEEPING IN FLAME, by Jonathan Carroll (1988)
Set in Vienna in the 1980s, it's a first-person narrative told by Walker Easterling, a recently divorced American ex-pat living in Austria. Early on, Walker meets Maris York, a quirky artist who needs help escaping a bad relationship.
This book was first given to me by a woman who said I write like Carroll (it is patently false - there was something else entirely going on there). Because of those undercurrents, I was wary of this novel until I got to page eleven, and this line:
Having an affair is like trying to hide an aligator under the bed. It is much too dangerous and big to be there, it sure doesn't fit, and no matter how carefully yoy try to conceal it, some part of the beast inevitably sticks out, is seen, sends everyone running and screaming.
From there I was pretty well hooked by the writing alone.
The most wonderful thing is that Carroll captures what it is to fall in love. All the excitement, the awkwardness, the need to exchange information. In essence, the desire to breathe the other person in.
There's a bit where Walker, to cheer her up, takes Maris to his three favorite places in Vienna - a barbershop, a pet shop, and a mountain view. It's his way of showing who he is, and trying to figure out who she is, and sharing and showing off all at once.
I was in Vienna a dozen years ago, and I called Mr. Carroll from the train station and asked directions to those three places. Sadly the pet store no longer existed, but I went in and got a haircut, then climbed the very steep hill to look down over the city while having a picnic. The greatest part was that the view was neither greater nor less than Carroll's description.
The second most wonderful thing is that once Maris and Walker do fall in love, which takes up only a third of the novel, Carroll makes a left turn and the story becomes something else entirely. I don't want to say what it becomes, because discovery is joy, but it has roots in dark literature and darker themes. Just fantastic. I don't think the last page is really necessary, but because it's both fun and foreboding I go back and forth.
The best thing is that you feel the author giving in to inspiration. "Well, why not have that happen?" he asks again and again. The answer is always, "I can do whatever I want!" This was the novel that taught me, as a writer, that writing is free. A story goes where it goes, and the person holding the pen needs to be willing - to dare - to follow it.
