Crane's View es un pequeño y agradable pueblo situado junto a un río, un lugar donde nunca sucede nada fuera de lo ordinario, al menos, para un observador casual. Porque desde el momento en que un perro de tres patas entra en la confortable vida del jefe de policía Frannie McCabe, muere a sus pies, y vuelve a la vida, McCabe se encuentra a sí mismo lanzado a un nuevo mundo de inenarrables y perturbadoras maravillas. Una pluma multicolor, misteriosos dibujos y un Frannie McCabe de diecisiete años se aparecen para insinuarle la verdad sobre su pasado, su presente y su futuro: él está en el centro de una conspiración, y lo que haga en los próximos días puede tener consecuencias para el mundo entero.

For me this lacks the naturalistic uncanniness of "The Land of Laughs" and is more like Wacky Wednesday on steroids. Weirdness is piled on top of weirdness as each chapter dives off the high-board into a different oneiric pool. There is a story here - or I guess more of a point than a story, about memory and the persistence of the self over time - but the technicolor goofiness of everything drowns it out. Time travel? Check. Aliens? Check. Zen koans? Check. Tancretic spredge? That too. What saves this novel from being annoying is Carroll's light-heartedness and obvious love for the suburban American setting. That and the fact that, mere wunderkammer though it may be, it is at least a diverting one. ( )

Good characters. SciFi mixed with mystery. Action moves the story along. Protagonist confronts his youthful self, learns to accept his past.
[read 2003-15 yr ago] ( )

This is one of the rare books that causes you to pause and ask yourself "What am I reading?" Not once, not twice, but a minimum of at least three times. The Wooden Sea is not a book for everyone; not even a book for most people.

Carroll's writing is utterly shameless. He writes for himself entirely, and what comes out is a set of characters incredibly well-defined. His setting, his characters, the surrealistic nature of his plot and universe itself all come off as incredibly reasonable. He bumps the cliché and then promptly subverts it - he nears a piece where a lesser writer would falter, and hurdles it with ease.

Jonathan Carroll, while not for everyone, seems to be for some people perfectly. I feel quite lucky to be among that crowd. ( )

Wow. From the 15th most traveled bookray on bookcrossing. Suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride. Frannie is a 47yo police chief in calm Crane's View. But things are not as orderly as they seem. First, there's a homeless dog that Frannie takes in, and when it dies, refuses to stay buried. Then a feather keeps appearing and disappearing. Then things start happening - Frannie younger hoodlum self appears, the town goes backwards and forwards, but only he can see it - and another being appears that says Frannie must find the fourth thing - whatever that is - to save the world. "How do you cross a wooden sea? I still do not know the answer.....nothing is more important than keeping every one of our individual selves alive.....Not know thyself, but know thy self." Interestingly, when I logged the book on librarything, it's the third book in a trilogy. It doesn't read like part of a series. Now off to France for the next reader! ( )