A Locus Magazine 2023 Recommending Reading List
A TOR.com Best Book of 2023
“[Carroll’s] prose is spare, polished and quick-moving, sometimes lightly comic, always immensely engaging… Mr. Breakfast is pure pleasure to read… It will surprise you, make you laugh and scare you — and then, just when you think it’s over, add several extra twists.” — The Washington Post
“Carroll’s prose… imprints deep into your psyche, amplifying the beauty and absurdity of everyday life while highlighting the metaphysical in the seemingly mundane.” — The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Entertaining and thought-provoking.” — The Boston Globe
“Few recent works of fiction in any genre have touched on the vagaries of life, love, and art more movingly or with deeper understanding. An intoxicating, deeply affecting novel by the influential fantasist.” — Kirkus, STARRED review
“A compulsively readable, introspective tale about the road not taken… At its heart, this is an arresting and imaginative meditation on life. Perfect for fans of magical realism with a free-flowing style like that of David Mitchell and Toshikazu Kawaguchi.” — Library Journal
“A beautiful and thoughtful book.” –Wisconsin Public Radio
“Generous, unpredictable, funny, and occasionally harrowing, it’s a perfect introduction to a major fantasist.” – TOR.com Best Books of 2023
“Another winner from one of our best fabulists… the novel thrilled me; it made me reflect on art, love, choices, and regrets; it left me with tears in the corners of my eyes and a smile on my face. What more can a reader ask for?” — TOR.com
“Both wistfully melancholy and downright joyous.” — Locus Magazine
“As always with the exceptionally imaginative Carroll, he creates complex worlds for his hero to inhabit and with clever crossovers between realms that are carefully thought out and fun to explore. Carroll’s attention to details is impressive, and the unexpected prevails.” — Booklist
“[Carroll] gives readers so much to consider about love, art, disappointment, loss, the wondrous possibilities of life, and the vast unknowables of the universe… This really interesting and weird novel challenges and delights.” — Bookreporter
“Carroll works comfortably and confidently within his fantasy and simply tells a good story.” — Complete Review
“This is both a characteristic book—a part of the Carroll mosaic—and a unique one. I love the refractions as early scenes are reconsidered in light of later ones. I slowed down in the last third, to savor the gorgeous intricacies. I love the humor—the sly humor, and the dumb jokes and the surreally-simple/simply-surreal word combinations that are always Jonathan Carroll’s signature.” — Jonathan Lethem, author of the New York Times-bestselling Motherless Brooklyn
“A beautiful, brilliant meditation on art, love, inspiration and what makes life worthwhile.” — Neil Gaiman
“A well-drawn world and characters in a completely original and unpredictable setting… I don’t know a more enjoyable or intelligent writer of his kind.” —Michael Moorcock
“Like Murakami, Brian Eno, or David Lynch, Jonathan Carroll is entirely sui generis, someone whose work is so fresh, weird, and original, it stands in a class of its own. Maybe the most striking thing about this lean, remarkable novel is Carroll’s caffeinated curiosity about everything, his roving eye for everyday wonders, for the effervescent in the banal. Mr. Breakfast is a small book of big ideas, a set of Russian nesting dolls with an entire universe glowing at the center.” —Joe Hill, bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box
“Reading Jonathan Carroll, one thinks of a blind person stroking a drugged tiger—an experience that is sensuous, dreamy, and dangerous all at once. And then, of course, the tiger wakes up.” — Bruce Wagner, author of Dead Stars
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