The Land of Laughs | |||||||||
Jonathan Carroll | |||||||||
Millennium Victor Gollancz, 242 pages | |||||||||
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A review by Rodger Turner
This is the third time I've read The Land of Laughs. It continues to be a
marvel of modern fiction for me. The manner in which Jonathan Carroll
captures the giddiness of book collecting, the joy in discovering a new
title, the jealousy of knowing a copy within reach belongs to someone else
all speak to some of my own passions. How does he know this? Maybe he is
bedeviled with a similar streak. I can only hope he is. Often, it is
difficult for a non-book person to understand let alone appreciate the
torment that a love of books and their acquisition inflicts upon a
collector. In the past, I was able to point to this book and say read the
beginning and you'll see what I go through. Alas, when The Land of Laughs
went out of print, my method of explanation was weaker and, for me, the world was a lesser place for it.
Together, Thomas and Saxony decide to write a biography of France
and arrive in Galen on a slow, summer day; expectant, delighted,
and a little trepidacious of what they might find.
To their surprise, the town has been waiting for them. Slowly, they begin
to realize that this small Midwest town and its inhabitants, human and animal, are not
what they seem. The magic of Marshall France had extended far beyond the printed page.
Thomas and Saxony find that their work is having an influence on the day-to-day affairs of the town.
Most people seem to know this, almost as if they knew their own history and what happens to them.
Anna, France's daughter, lets them in on a few of the town's secrets and how Tom is affecting their
lives. Horrified that he has their fate in his hands, Thomas urges Saxony to leave but she soon returns
for she's hopelessly smitten with him. They decide that the best bet is to continue work
on the biography to the point where France arrives in Galen. That day a train that doesn't
stop in town anymore is welcomed at the station and Thomas realizes that he's got to leave before
the town decide they don't need him any more. It is a shivery moment in the book
which will remain forever imprinted on my brain. Few scenes I've ever read are more dreadful yet hopeful.
One of them happens in the next chapter when the assassin sent by Galen residents confronts
Thomas in Austria.
When Ace had the foresight to publish the paperback version of The Land of
Laughs, it was the David Mattingly cover that caught my eye. I was a
partner in an SF bookstore at the time and the prospect of reading a new
author's book was both a thrill and a worry. You never knew whether this one
would be a keeper. The Land of Laughs was and we went into overdrive
trying to find HC copies. Sometime later, the book was dropped from the catalogue
and we asked the book rep who sold us their titles what was going on since being delisted usually meant that a
title was going out-of-print. He said they had a few boxes in the warehouse
and we promptly bought them all. From that point on, The Land of Laughs was
sold for a couple of years with a money-back guarantee -- if they could tell
us why they didn't like it, we'd refund the purchase. I don't recall that
we ever did. It was one of the few titles that ever got such a guarantee.
If you ever read another book in your life, it should be The Land of Laughs.
Rodger has read a lot of science fiction and fantasy in forty years. He can only shake his head and say, "So many books, so little time." |
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