Written by Brie
May 9th, 2010

The Ghost in Love makes me want to track down Jonathan Carroll and hug him. (The Land of Laughs made me want to hug him, but this novel takes it up a notch.)

This is the story of Ben, his former girlfriend - German, his ghost - Ling, and his dog - Pilot. To say the least, it is a complex tale of how the four of them interact with the rest of society, the world at large, each other, and themselves. This novel explores many aspects of the self and the amount of power an individual has over the course of his life.

Perhaps the strongest compliment I can give to the beauty of this work is that I did not want to finish it. I got to the final chapter, and I was so in love with the characters, the depth of the themes, the lyrics of the prose, that I could not fathom how it was going to end, and I didn’t want it to. Much like in the midst of new relationship energy, you can’t imagine any way that a partnership will falter, and you want to grab on tightly to any piece of the beauty you are enveloped in, I wanted to hold on to this story, never see it end, but allow my heart to play the “what if” game over and over, following multiple paths the story might take, where certain decisions might lead.

So, I put it down. I waited a few hours. And then I had to pick it back up, as I didn’t want to be separated from it any longer.

The final chapter was a thing of beauty, if a bit too blatant in a few moments for my personal taste. I felt as though Carroll was hitting the reader on the head (gently, not wanting to hurt you) with his mantra. And while I appreciated it once, maybe even twice, I did get to a point where I wanted to hug the man a bit more tightly just to get him to shut up. I loved the message, but I also appreciate subtlety.

Overall, The Ghost in Love is a masterpiece of the exploration of taking charge of one’s self and destiny. The faults are part of the whole, make the whole more stunning, and should not be viewed as a weakness of the piece… as that would mean I took nothing from the work at all.

Posted in Personal
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