Jonathan Carroll – The Ghost in Love – Review

Carroll is a truly original author. I remember back in 2012, reading his daily blog concerning art, literature, and brilliant observations about normal people around his home in Vienna, Austria. The blog entries were real with a touch of magic about them. He is not necessarily a fantasy writer, nor would I call his work, magical realism. He has a style and approach to story-telling that is certainly unique – in The Ghost in Love , the writing is a view of existence where anything is possible.:logic is suspended for 320 pages, and all bets are off. That said, there is a intuitive logic; unreality meets reality, and the fantastic, more often, is more relatable than the surreal.

The Ghost in Love is centred around four characters: Ling (the Ghost), Ben (central protagonist), German Landis (Ben's girlfriend) and Pilot (the dog, co-owned by Ben and German). Ben has an accident, hit by a car and injures his head. He was meant to die, but something in the universal computer has glitched. Ling is assigned to Ben by the Angel of Death, to observe him under these unusual circumstances. The tale is told through the perspectives of all four characters. Pilot's point of view is the most cynical and funny, as a dog, we come to discover his world is much more complex and deep than any human could possibly comprehend.

From a surface reading of this Carroll tale, we might mistake this novel for the musings of a over-imaginative writer. As readers we are lulled into a sense of normalcy to then be taken to perspectives that make no sense. “Wait a minute, dogs cant talk or have a witty cynicism about their existence”? But like many great writers, through the images of a absurd parable, will address the important questions about the human condition. A good example is Orwell's Animal Farm, though a story about talking animals, it becomes a critique on totalitarianism and its hierarchies. Ghost is a tale about the human condition, and how our choices can change our fate, if only we honestly examine ourselves...

At the end of the novel, I was reminded about the psychology of Carl Jung. In modern times, we feel to be disconnected, shattered as a result of the unexamined life and materialism. Jung sought the goal if individuation, the coalescence of our unconscious, our numerous personas, and what he called the Shadow. Through therapy and self-analysis, we confront our childhood, our dreams and negative attributes, to then reach a greater understanding of ourselves and existence. Through this process, we become whole as a human soul.

It is the genius of Carroll to ask these universal questions in the setting of the modern world in such a simple and entertaining way.

Personally I loved this novel. I loved the characters (especially Pilot the mutt) and the journey they take to understand themselves and existence.

Brilliant.