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caitlinxmartin's review
4.0
The Marriage of Sticks slides along the slipstream, as most of his works to. His writing is filled with magical imagery and moments when you can't quite figure out what's going on, but in the end it doesn't matter because Carroll can tell a great story. Carroll's works always manage to live in the ordinary world and in the magical world that lies adjacent. In The Marriage of Sticks this is quite clear as the book moves through its paces and becomes increasingly creepy and fantastical.
The main character, Miranda (yes, I thought of Miranda in The Tempest, too), is looking for love and surprised when it finds her through a man who embodies her past, but is only tangentially connected to it. An exploration of love, of memory, and of loss - Carroll draws us effortlessly into a world where characters find happiness only to be driven from it relentlessly. His writing is creative and surprising and his stories unsettling and ambiguous. Lovely read.
The main character, Miranda (yes, I thought of Miranda in The Tempest, too), is looking for love and surprised when it finds her through a man who embodies her past, but is only tangentially connected to it. An exploration of love, of memory, and of loss - Carroll draws us effortlessly into a world where characters find happiness only to be driven from it relentlessly. His writing is creative and surprising and his stories unsettling and ambiguous. Lovely read.
uprtquotes's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
1.0
library_brandy's review
4.0
Romance, ghosts, immortality, and coming to grips with who you are, were, and could be. A little thin and preachy at times, but so much better than the last three of his I've read. It's not quite five-star material, but it's pretty close.
On reading this now, I suspect that when Carroll wrote The Ghost in Love he was trying to recreate what he did here--like maybe Marriage of Sticks didn't come out exactly as he'd planned so he tried again, only to fail miserably. There's a certain irony to him trying to reincarnate what could be an immortal love story...
On reading this now, I suspect that when Carroll wrote The Ghost in Love he was trying to recreate what he did here--like maybe Marriage of Sticks didn't come out exactly as he'd planned so he tried again, only to fail miserably. There's a certain irony to him trying to reincarnate what could be an immortal love story...
thebrokedown's review
3.0
Well, that got weird.
Magical realism of a sort, after pages of just...realism. Interesting, but not arresting.
Magical realism of a sort, after pages of just...realism. Interesting, but not arresting.
polnocna's review
5.0
This book disappointed me at first. Then it angered me. Then it resonated with me. Then it hit me. unapologetically. Then it made me laugh at myself. And that's precisely the ingenuity of this book, I believe.
It hits you hard between the eyes and there is no escaping from certain realisations. You either are one of the people with "Whoever dies with most toys, wins" T-shirt, or you're not. (this was a spoiler/quote) Or - it's time to choose. It's always time to chose, in fact. And nothing feels safe, until you do. That's how our lives work. Tick, tock :)
I have struggled with this book. I put it aside for a year, half through it, before I came back to it, and boy, am I glad that I have...
At first, it felt bleak, forced, pointless and weird ... mildly entertaining without any particular reason.
Until almost at the end, when everything changed for me: Miranda talks to Frances at the hospice/hospital, finally painfully aware of what is going on with her life, and confronted with the selfishness of her many pointless lives. It's there where the magic of this story happens. Many lives might be a symbol for the fact that when we interact with other people, all the things we do - can and will change THEIR lives for better or worse. This way we metaphorically live many lives. People say Carroll's failed, because Miranda is not more selfish that any of us. I say that's PRECISELY his point. We are Miranda. Our everyday egocentrism is vampiric in its nature and we do eat each other alive, and put ourselves first for most of our young lives. That's how we survive as species. Until one day we are confronted with something way bigger then ourselves, and we have to make a choice. Some of us have, some were waiting to make it, some struggle with it, and yet some choose to not change anything and just walk over and past it and continue the empty, selfish life of theirs. Filled to the brim by themselves and their own importance, but with no real place for others. This is how I see the allegory of vampirism that he's using. It's spot on. How many people do we meet every single day, who behave as if they were immortal, as if nobody else mattered, as if they had unlimited time, unlimited chances ready and waiting? As if everything in this world was theirs, because they live in the bubble of believing they deserve it? It's the same people who suck us dry, who walk through us, leaving us feelig empty, berieved, cheated, worse off?
And I strongly believe that Carroll chose a female protagonist not by accident, and absolutely not driven by misogyny. He chose a female, because women have more to give. They have more potential. And they are faced with LOTS more choices in lives, then most men. And they often suffer more. By their very nature, women will on and on be required to choose to sacrifice themselves selflessly for another beings. And yes, it can feel like disappearing, like giving away ones life, if it's a sacrifice big enough, like it is in case of own children, Carroll hasn't even use an allegory here, it's staring right in our faces, in form of Miranda's pregnancy and her acknowledgement of standing in front of some very hard life changes and choices. Will she love her daughter as an extension, a part of herself, as something that completes who she is, thus taking twice as much of her as she gives? Or will her love be an unconditional, selfless gift, an acknowledgement of her daughter's individuality? A sacrifice of giving her life away to another human being? Loving someone else more than she loved herself? Is she even capable of it, at this point of her life? Does she even understand what it means, and what she has to do? I don't think so, at this point Miranda is wildly confused, and the sacrifice of giving her life to another human being is (on purpose, I believe) compared by Carroll to an absurd symbolism of Frances setting a dog on fire.
At the end of the day, none of us does, until it happens :)
Carroll is often accused of misogyny in this book. I don't agree.
If anything, this proves his surprising insight into woman's psyche and her role in life, not the opposite. At the end of this book, you are inevitably forced to confront the question: who am I? Do I care? Where do I fit? Do I shrug and go past? Do I think about myself, or others in my life, after reading it? Does it make me reflect, or do I feel offended by it?
I felt both.....
It took me completely by surprise, not for a moment did I expect such a raw confrontation from this book. It felt like skinning a rabbit, only this time I was a rabbit. Some caressing, some pinching here and there, nothing much, and then, suddenly, with one skilled rapid TUG - skin's gone. I'm raw, unprotected and emotionally naked.
Who am I in the endless game of life?
Anyways :)
That's just my take on it, one more opinion :)
It hits you hard between the eyes and there is no escaping from certain realisations. You either are one of the people with "Whoever dies with most toys, wins" T-shirt, or you're not. (this was a spoiler/quote) Or - it's time to choose. It's always time to chose, in fact. And nothing feels safe, until you do. That's how our lives work. Tick, tock :)
I have struggled with this book. I put it aside for a year, half through it, before I came back to it, and boy, am I glad that I have...
At first, it felt bleak, forced, pointless and weird ... mildly entertaining without any particular reason.
Until almost at the end, when everything changed for me: Miranda talks to Frances at the hospice/hospital, finally painfully aware of what is going on with her life, and confronted with the selfishness of her many pointless lives. It's there where the magic of this story happens. Many lives might be a symbol for the fact that when we interact with other people, all the things we do - can and will change THEIR lives for better or worse. This way we metaphorically live many lives. People say Carroll's failed, because Miranda is not more selfish that any of us. I say that's PRECISELY his point. We are Miranda. Our everyday egocentrism is vampiric in its nature and we do eat each other alive, and put ourselves first for most of our young lives. That's how we survive as species. Until one day we are confronted with something way bigger then ourselves, and we have to make a choice. Some of us have, some were waiting to make it, some struggle with it, and yet some choose to not change anything and just walk over and past it and continue the empty, selfish life of theirs. Filled to the brim by themselves and their own importance, but with no real place for others. This is how I see the allegory of vampirism that he's using. It's spot on. How many people do we meet every single day, who behave as if they were immortal, as if nobody else mattered, as if they had unlimited time, unlimited chances ready and waiting? As if everything in this world was theirs, because they live in the bubble of believing they deserve it? It's the same people who suck us dry, who walk through us, leaving us feelig empty, berieved, cheated, worse off?
And I strongly believe that Carroll chose a female protagonist not by accident, and absolutely not driven by misogyny. He chose a female, because women have more to give. They have more potential. And they are faced with LOTS more choices in lives, then most men. And they often suffer more. By their very nature, women will on and on be required to choose to sacrifice themselves selflessly for another beings. And yes, it can feel like disappearing, like giving away ones life, if it's a sacrifice big enough, like it is in case of own children, Carroll hasn't even use an allegory here, it's staring right in our faces, in form of Miranda's pregnancy and her acknowledgement of standing in front of some very hard life changes and choices. Will she love her daughter as an extension, a part of herself, as something that completes who she is, thus taking twice as much of her as she gives? Or will her love be an unconditional, selfless gift, an acknowledgement of her daughter's individuality? A sacrifice of giving her life away to another human being? Loving someone else more than she loved herself? Is she even capable of it, at this point of her life? Does she even understand what it means, and what she has to do? I don't think so, at this point Miranda is wildly confused, and the sacrifice of giving her life to another human being is (on purpose, I believe) compared by Carroll to an absurd symbolism of Frances setting a dog on fire.
At the end of the day, none of us does, until it happens :)
Carroll is often accused of misogyny in this book. I don't agree.
If anything, this proves his surprising insight into woman's psyche and her role in life, not the opposite. At the end of this book, you are inevitably forced to confront the question: who am I? Do I care? Where do I fit? Do I shrug and go past? Do I think about myself, or others in my life, after reading it? Does it make me reflect, or do I feel offended by it?
I felt both.....
It took me completely by surprise, not for a moment did I expect such a raw confrontation from this book. It felt like skinning a rabbit, only this time I was a rabbit. Some caressing, some pinching here and there, nothing much, and then, suddenly, with one skilled rapid TUG - skin's gone. I'm raw, unprotected and emotionally naked.
Who am I in the endless game of life?
Anyways :)
That's just my take on it, one more opinion :)
cdcsmith's review
5.0
I read The Wooden Sea as my first Jonathan Carroll book. In a way, I wish I had read this one first. I loved it. I was engaged from page 1. Reading other reviews, most people seemed to love the first half of the book, but the opinions seemed to split on the second half.
For me, the 2nd half of the book was just as good. Yes, things got a little more strange, but at least to me, there weren't so many unaswered questions as some people seem to have felt were left hanging.
This may be a book I need for my library.
For me, the 2nd half of the book was just as good. Yes, things got a little more strange, but at least to me, there weren't so many unaswered questions as some people seem to have felt were left hanging.
This may be a book I need for my library.
smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in July 2002.
The basic scenario of The Marriage of Sticks is typical, I believe, of Carroll's novels (I've only read one other, [b:The Land of Laughs|42143|The Land of Laughs|Jonathan Carroll|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1317064936s/42143.jpg|495086], but this is what I gather). It starts off naturalistically, but gradually strange things begin to happen. In this case, central character Miranda Romanac attends a high school reunion which is spoilt when she hears that the childhood sweetheart James Stillman she expected to see again died some years ago. Returning to her life as a bookdealer in New York, she makes the acquaintance of a fascinating elderly woman, who knew everyone intimately (people like [a:Hemingway|1455|Ernest Hemingway|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1357893816p2/1455.jpg] and the famous artists of the twenties). Leaving this woman's apartment, she sees James across the street, which turns out only to be the first in a series of bizarre encounters and events.
Both in this novel and The Land of Laughs, the strange events which happen are connected to ideas about fate. Carroll's first novel is about how it might feel to be part of a book, and know that the events in your life are written as fiction by another. Here, fate is fixed for most people, but Miranda is able to change things. This is described mainly through the effects it has on the lives of the others with whom she interacts - James Stillman doesn't have a life-changing experience when she refuses to go on a teenage spree that would have led to imprisonment; a later lover leaves his wife for her when they were meant to stay together.
The title comes from an idea suggested to Miranda by this lover. When some significant event occurs, find a stick and write the date on it (presumably these characters always carry a penknife and a pen). Keep the sticks to stimulate memories, but when you are old and have no more need of them, put them together and burn them, a fire Carroll calls the marriage of sticks. This is presumably something that will bring a kind of closure, an idea which becomes important in the second part of the novel. (How can a person find closure at the end of their life if it has been deflected from its intended course?)
The Marriage of Sticks is an intense novel, and I found reading it an intense experience. A lot of it is about death and mourning, and it brought back memories of that kind from my own life. Not then for the recently bereaved, but recommended for anyone else.
The basic scenario of The Marriage of Sticks is typical, I believe, of Carroll's novels (I've only read one other, [b:The Land of Laughs|42143|The Land of Laughs|Jonathan Carroll|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1317064936s/42143.jpg|495086], but this is what I gather). It starts off naturalistically, but gradually strange things begin to happen. In this case, central character Miranda Romanac attends a high school reunion which is spoilt when she hears that the childhood sweetheart James Stillman she expected to see again died some years ago. Returning to her life as a bookdealer in New York, she makes the acquaintance of a fascinating elderly woman, who knew everyone intimately (people like [a:Hemingway|1455|Ernest Hemingway|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1357893816p2/1455.jpg] and the famous artists of the twenties). Leaving this woman's apartment, she sees James across the street, which turns out only to be the first in a series of bizarre encounters and events.
Both in this novel and The Land of Laughs, the strange events which happen are connected to ideas about fate. Carroll's first novel is about how it might feel to be part of a book, and know that the events in your life are written as fiction by another. Here, fate is fixed for most people, but Miranda is able to change things. This is described mainly through the effects it has on the lives of the others with whom she interacts - James Stillman doesn't have a life-changing experience when she refuses to go on a teenage spree that would have led to imprisonment; a later lover leaves his wife for her when they were meant to stay together.
The title comes from an idea suggested to Miranda by this lover. When some significant event occurs, find a stick and write the date on it (presumably these characters always carry a penknife and a pen). Keep the sticks to stimulate memories, but when you are old and have no more need of them, put them together and burn them, a fire Carroll calls the marriage of sticks. This is presumably something that will bring a kind of closure, an idea which becomes important in the second part of the novel. (How can a person find closure at the end of their life if it has been deflected from its intended course?)
The Marriage of Sticks is an intense novel, and I found reading it an intense experience. A lot of it is about death and mourning, and it brought back memories of that kind from my own life. Not then for the recently bereaved, but recommended for anyone else.
gengelcox's review
4.0
Jonathan Carroll’s last novel, Kissing the Beehive, marked a departure in his oeuvre. In his nine previous novels, Carroll had created a strange marriage between the detail-oriented fiction of contemporary novelists and the fantastic mythology of the South American magical realists. Reading a Carroll novel was like discovering John Updike novelizing Twilight Zone episodes or finding the source material for a David Lynch film that did not contain the misogyny and grotesque. The critic John Clute grouped the last seven of Carroll’s novels (which share some common characters and events, similar to the way that Robertson Davies, an acknowledged influence, would repeat within his trilogies) under the collective term, “Answered Prayers.” It is an apt phrase that describes the way in which Carroll’s characters often found themselves presented with their deepest wishes, to then discover that there is a catch. This is similar to the 1902 short story, “The Monkey’s Paw,” by W.W. Jacobs, wherein a man uses a desiccated monkey hand that had been cursed by a shaman to wish for 200 pounds sterling, but receives it through an accident in which his son is caught in machinery and the son’s employer, disclaiming responsibility of course, compensates the family in exactly that amount.
With Kissing the Beehive, Carroll put aside the supernatural and concentrated on the realism. Much of the novel was mined from his own experience: a dead body that he discovered as a teenager in his home town and his feelings as a writer who believes himself caught in a rut. Instead of a mystical experience of characters coming to terms with their innermost desires, Kissing the Beehive was more a traditional mystery. The macguffin is the dead body, and the plot, while circuitous, ends when the mystery is solved. Although still containing his trademark touches of better-than-life dialogue and clever situations, most of his regular readers were unsatisfied. They had come to expect magic from Carroll, and no amount of smoke and mirrors could conceal that Kissing the Beehive was about everyday illusions.
Those same readers will not be disappointed by Carroll’s new novel, The Marriage of Sticks. Miranda Romanac still recalls her high school boyfriend, James Stillman, with fondness, and when she returns to Crane’s View, New York, for her fifteen-year reunion, she harbors an ill-concealed desire to see him and possibly rekindle their relationship. She is shocked, therefore, to learn that he is dead, the victim of a car crash three years earlier. Devastated, she returns to her life as a rare book dealer, during the course of which she makes the acquaintance of Frances Hatch, an infamous paramour of the wealthy and powerful in the 1940s and 1950s. At a party, she meets Hugh Oakley, an art dealer, who knew Stillman in the intervening years between high school and his death. Then she sees Stillman on the street in New York. But is it really Stillman, or is it a ghost?
Miranda and all her friends, to some extent, lead wonderful lives. When Carroll describes her love for discovering a first edition, you feel that whatever you do pales in comparison to that career. Your love life is not nearly as intense as the attraction between Miranda and Hugh or Frances and her true love, The Enormous Shumda, a stage magician in Poland. In Carroll’s world, fiction is stronger than truth, and every event is filled with meaning and significance. From the pen of any other writer, this would by cloying, but Carroll always leavens his text with a pinch of dread. His characters live in the eye of the storm, an idyllic time and place that is made even more so because we sense that it is temporary. The center cannot hold, and when things fall apart . . . well, that’s when the story gets truly interesting. Miranda destroys Hugh’s marriage, albeit with his help; she becomes pregnant with his child; Frances lends the new couple her home in Crane’s View, which precipitates a ghostly vision of their future happiness, immediately shattered by an unexpected death.
Carroll has always had an ability to tell stories in which bad things happen to good people. In The Marriage of Sticks, he attempts to modify that theme into “bad things happen to bad people,” but I am somewhat unconvinced that Miranda is as heartless as Carroll wants her to appear or as the characters in the book accuse her of being. Instead, Miranda’s selfishness and vanity make her appear only more human than some of Carroll’s previous protagonists, who were people that you wanted to know existed but had never met. Miranda is much more like the woman next door, which makes the pathos of the book stronger in that you can identify with the character while it weakens the plot elements that push the story to its ambiguous ending. (Endings have never been a Carrollian virtue, although in recent novels they have ended with more closure than this book, which harkens back to the sudden and open endings of novels like Outside the Dog Museum.)
The title itself is a typical example of Carrollian whimsy that seems saccharine yet is filled with meaning. “It was [Hugh’s] idea: when anything truly important happens in your life, wherever you happen to be, find a stick in the immediate vicinity and write the occasion and date on it. Keep them together, protect them. There shouldn’t be too many; sort through them every few years and separate the events that remain genuinely important from those that were but no longer are . . . . When you are very old, very sick, or sure there’s not much time left to live, put them together and burn them. The marriage of sticks.”
The Marriage of Sticks reuses the town of Crane’s View and the character of Frannie McCabe, the town’s sheriff, both significant parts of Kissing the Beehive. I assume that this means that Carroll has entered into a new story cycle that will somehow differ from the “Answered Prayers” series. With only two installments to examine, it is too early to make any definitive statements, but the corresponding theme between them is the all-too-human urge to reflect on the past and wonder how things might have been. In Carroll’s world, you can go home again, but there are plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t.
With Kissing the Beehive, Carroll put aside the supernatural and concentrated on the realism. Much of the novel was mined from his own experience: a dead body that he discovered as a teenager in his home town and his feelings as a writer who believes himself caught in a rut. Instead of a mystical experience of characters coming to terms with their innermost desires, Kissing the Beehive was more a traditional mystery. The macguffin is the dead body, and the plot, while circuitous, ends when the mystery is solved. Although still containing his trademark touches of better-than-life dialogue and clever situations, most of his regular readers were unsatisfied. They had come to expect magic from Carroll, and no amount of smoke and mirrors could conceal that Kissing the Beehive was about everyday illusions.
Those same readers will not be disappointed by Carroll’s new novel, The Marriage of Sticks. Miranda Romanac still recalls her high school boyfriend, James Stillman, with fondness, and when she returns to Crane’s View, New York, for her fifteen-year reunion, she harbors an ill-concealed desire to see him and possibly rekindle their relationship. She is shocked, therefore, to learn that he is dead, the victim of a car crash three years earlier. Devastated, she returns to her life as a rare book dealer, during the course of which she makes the acquaintance of Frances Hatch, an infamous paramour of the wealthy and powerful in the 1940s and 1950s. At a party, she meets Hugh Oakley, an art dealer, who knew Stillman in the intervening years between high school and his death. Then she sees Stillman on the street in New York. But is it really Stillman, or is it a ghost?
Miranda and all her friends, to some extent, lead wonderful lives. When Carroll describes her love for discovering a first edition, you feel that whatever you do pales in comparison to that career. Your love life is not nearly as intense as the attraction between Miranda and Hugh or Frances and her true love, The Enormous Shumda, a stage magician in Poland. In Carroll’s world, fiction is stronger than truth, and every event is filled with meaning and significance. From the pen of any other writer, this would by cloying, but Carroll always leavens his text with a pinch of dread. His characters live in the eye of the storm, an idyllic time and place that is made even more so because we sense that it is temporary. The center cannot hold, and when things fall apart . . . well, that’s when the story gets truly interesting. Miranda destroys Hugh’s marriage, albeit with his help; she becomes pregnant with his child; Frances lends the new couple her home in Crane’s View, which precipitates a ghostly vision of their future happiness, immediately shattered by an unexpected death.
Carroll has always had an ability to tell stories in which bad things happen to good people. In The Marriage of Sticks, he attempts to modify that theme into “bad things happen to bad people,” but I am somewhat unconvinced that Miranda is as heartless as Carroll wants her to appear or as the characters in the book accuse her of being. Instead, Miranda’s selfishness and vanity make her appear only more human than some of Carroll’s previous protagonists, who were people that you wanted to know existed but had never met. Miranda is much more like the woman next door, which makes the pathos of the book stronger in that you can identify with the character while it weakens the plot elements that push the story to its ambiguous ending. (Endings have never been a Carrollian virtue, although in recent novels they have ended with more closure than this book, which harkens back to the sudden and open endings of novels like Outside the Dog Museum.)
The title itself is a typical example of Carrollian whimsy that seems saccharine yet is filled with meaning. “It was [Hugh’s] idea: when anything truly important happens in your life, wherever you happen to be, find a stick in the immediate vicinity and write the occasion and date on it. Keep them together, protect them. There shouldn’t be too many; sort through them every few years and separate the events that remain genuinely important from those that were but no longer are . . . . When you are very old, very sick, or sure there’s not much time left to live, put them together and burn them. The marriage of sticks.”
The Marriage of Sticks reuses the town of Crane’s View and the character of Frannie McCabe, the town’s sheriff, both significant parts of Kissing the Beehive. I assume that this means that Carroll has entered into a new story cycle that will somehow differ from the “Answered Prayers” series. With only two installments to examine, it is too early to make any definitive statements, but the corresponding theme between them is the all-too-human urge to reflect on the past and wonder how things might have been. In Carroll’s world, you can go home again, but there are plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t.
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