Since the appearance of his first novel, The Land of Laughs, in 1980, Jonathan Carroll has been one of the most compelling, consistently versatile storytellers in modern imaginative literature. His extraordinary new novella, Teaching the Dog to Read, is quintessential Carroll: surprising, funny, and filled with unexpected moments and astonishing revelations. The story opens when mid-level office drone Tony Areal receives an extravagant gift: the Lichtenberg wristwatch he has always coveted. Shortly afterward, he receives an even grander gift: the luxurious—and expensive—Porsche Cayman that has always been the car of his dreams. Accompanying the car is the mysterious Alice, who knows more about Tony’s dreams and desires than Tony himself. This encounter opens the door to a rich and unexpected universe: the world behind the world. Teaching the Dog to Read is set at the intersection of the mundane and the miraculous, a place where reality itself shifts and shimmers with disconcerting suddenness. It begins in the realm of recognizable things and ends in a hospital room where a bizarre—and invisible—reunion takes place. Along the way, it offers both grand entertainment and a visionary meditation on the complex connections between our dreaming and waking selves. The result is a master class in the art of narrative and a permanent addition to Jonathan Carroll’s remarkable body of work.
Author
Jonathan Carroll (b. 1949) is an award-winning American author of modern fantasy and slipstream novels. His debut book, The Land of Laughs (1980), tells the story of a children’s author whose imagination has left the printed page and begun to influence reality. The book introduced several hallmarks of Carroll’s writing, including talking animals and worlds that straddle the thin line between reality and the surreal, a technique that has seen him compared to South American magical realists. Outside the Dog Museum (1991) was named the best novel of the year by the British Fantasy Society, and has proven to be one of Carroll’s most popular works. Since then he has written the Crane’s View trilogy, Glass Soup (2005) and, most recently, The Ghost in Love (2008). His short stories have been collected in The Panic Hand (1995) and The Woman Who Married a Cloud (2012). He continues to live and write in Vienna.
