The Griffin or the Agate

     The Wooden Sea, the latest offering from modern fantasist Jonathan Carroll, bears a strong resemblance to many of his earlier works. His characters, while usually offbeat and unusual, are also imbued with frailties and quirks that make them seem real and believable. His tales contain a whiff of mysticism, of the Hand of God lurking somewhere just out of sight, almost ready to intervene, but not quite yet. The essence of his fantasy seems to spring from the everyday, from the mundane, pouncing on unsuspecting, and often unwilling to believe, protagonists who find their ordered lives turned asunder. Finally, his works are always too short. Not because he leaves issues unresolved, but because the reader is always left wanting more of his finely crafted work. Oh, and there's usually a dog. An unusual one.
     The Wooden Sea returns to Crane's View, the setting of his previous works Kissing the Beehive and The Marriage of Sticks. This time the center of the story is Frannie McCabe, the bad-boy-turned-good police chief of the burg. Happily remarried and slowly building a relationship with his teenaged stepdaughter, McCabe is living a pleasant existence. Maybe not idyllic, but certainly not shabby. And then along came the three-legged, one-eyed, strange-breathing dog, who died in Fran's care. But not before winking at him. And then, after being buried, reappearing in the trunk of Frannie's car.
     Always the weird dog.
     Truly a flat-earther, Frannie must now come to terms with the strange and inexplicable happenings which are cropping up in his life, not the least of which include a teenaged version of himself showing up. The surface world he's always known is being split open and things he never imagined to exist are tumbling out. Something huge, cosmically huge is going down and Frannie finds himself smack dab in the middle. An omnipresent feather, an obscure riddle, and jaunts to his past and present combine to rock Frannie's stable world and make him realize that what he does or doesn't do may have serious implications on the world - and the universe.
     Carroll is a master storyteller. His dialog rings true and is often redolent with equal parts humor and emotion. He seems fascinated with the concept of God's role with mankind, a recurring theme in his works, but rather than try to impose his ideas on the reader Carroll invites them to come to their own conclusions. He'll just provide the path. He offers the kind of writing that isn't forgotten the moment the text is finished, but rather lingers like a pleasant memory or the tastes from a fine meal.
     At 302 pages, The Wooden Sea is a quick read, but the short length can be forgiven due to the richness of what lies within. While not as engaging and magical as his World Fantasy Award Winning Outside the Dog Museum, The Wooden Sea more than ably stands on its own merits.
     Just watch out for the dog.   §

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