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Sleeping in Flame
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Orb Books
Manufacturer: Orb Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: October 01, 2004
Publisher: Orb Books
Release Date: September 09, 2004
Studio: Orb Books
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Editorial Review:
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 they happen, and at the same time feels an incredibly strong tug from his past-so a friend steers him to Venasque, an odd little man reputed to be a powerful shaman. Venasque helps Walker discover and unravel his many interconnected past lives, and it is soon clear that an unresolved conflict from these past lives has resurfaced, and now threatens to undo Walker and Maris's love.At once lyrical, frightening, funny, and sexy, Sleeping in Flame is a spellbinding tale where reality and fantasy merge in astonishing convolutions of magic and suspense. It confirms that Jonathan Carroll is one of the very few novelists who-by constantly surprising us-give us an entirely new perspective on our world. It is no wonder that he is generally considered to be the most original and provocative novelist of his generation.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Not fantasy, but pseudo, new-age spirituality
Okay, clearly I'm in the minority here. I purchased this book because so many people put it on their list of best nontraditional fantasy novels. This is not, however a book in the fantasy genre. It falls more in the tradition of books like The Alchemist, that is to say, books of the "the magic is within you" type of spirtualality. Unlike The Alchemist, however, the story takes forever to unfold, and in order to even get to the old, Jewish shaman who likes to watch Miami Vice on TV, you first ... Read More
Rating:  - Another good Carroll book
I am a huge fan of Carroll, having read almost every single one if his books. Sleeping in Flame, the most recent of his books I have finished, is a decent book that blends the fantastic into the everyday life of reality. The dialogue is believable and the plot twists are fun.
Two minor faults. Having read Outside the Dog Museum I felt the Venasque scene was all too familiar, giving the feeling that I had already read that part of the book. Additionally, sometimes the plot is a little ... Read More
Rating:  - Carroll's best!
This was the first Jonathan Carroll book I ever read. Now, having read all his others as well, it's the one I keep coming back to and recommending to my friends. Carroll is a skilled prose writer and constructs believable dialogue surrounding almost-unbelievable situations. Although his books get a little predictable after a while, this book stands out for me as Carroll at his best.
Rating: - Lovely work, as is usual for Carroll
"Walker Easterling, an actor, saves a woman's life only to place her in infinitely greater danger by falling in love with her. Maris York, an artist, is an androgynous beauty who arouses incinerating passions in the men around her. Sleeping In Flame is a novel populated by a shaman with a fondness for sandwiches, an autistic Adonis, and a tiny man as powerful and ravenously jealous as the God of the Old Testament." (cover blurb, paraphrased)
Just when the reader thinks he's in the middle ... Read More
Rating: - My Introduction to Magical Realism
I never knew what magical realism was before I read this book. To be frank, it didn't seem possible. You were either writing magic, or you weren't. Magical realism seemed this hypothetical mix that couldn't hold water. For me, if you were writing about magic and you weren't writing a fantasy book (or Terry Pratchett), it seemed pointless. With Sleeping in Flame, Jonathan Carroll changed all that.
I went into this book knowing it was in the magical realism genre, not knowing what that genre ... Read More
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