The Wooden Sea
by Jonathan Carroll

An Book Review

by Koala

Usually, I am not a fan of Jonathan Carroll’s writing. His gratuitous use of swearing, sex, and drugs may seem edgy to some, but it’s just annoying to me. More often than not, I find myself hating the book halfway through, and The Wooden Sea was no exception. But I finished the book. I always finish his books, even though the endings tend to fall apart and leave me confused.

The Wooden Sea details the life, or rather, lives, of police chief Frannie McCabe. It begins with a three-legged dog resembling a marble cake stumbling into ex-delinquent McCabe’s office and dying. When he goes to bury the dog, he finds a feather, the most beautiful feather he’s ever seen. This feather re-appears throughout the story, although its purpose is never really explained. Odd things start to happen to McCabe. His garage smells amazing. Two people disappear without a trace. His teenage self shows up in his living room late at night. The book goes on with the appropriate amount of plot twists, a couple of visits to the future, and…aliens? What? His book was really confusing and hard to follow. I did, however, really like the character of teenage Frannie (called ‘Gee-Gee’ to cover his true identity) even though he develops a “thing” for McCabe’s stepdaughter later in the book.

This book is definitely not Carroll’s best work, and the ending (and much of the book) made no sense. Lots of things were left unexplained. I feel like it was a good idea for a plot, but Carroll just didn’t put the time into it to make it as good as it could have been.

KOALA’S GRADE: D (2 eucalyptus leaves out of 5)

MIGHTY DOOM’S TWO CENTS ON THE WOODEN SEA

            I also gave The Wooden Sea a shot.  It’s a quick read—I finished it in about a week—and I’ll concede Koala’s point that its initial promise is lost as the story progresses, though I must have missed the swearing, sex and drugs.  Conceptually, Carroll’s writing reminds me strongly of Philip K. Dick.  There’s a great deal of plot, none of which is explained satisfactorily.  Frannie and Gee-Gee have some wonderful smart-ass back-and-forth dialogue, but The Wooden Sea is basically a complex time-travel story that’s bogged down more and more by its message—something about listening to your elders and cherishing the small things in life—that it simply makes no fucking sense by the end of the book.

DOOM’S FINAL JUDGMENT: C+ (3 curses to Richards out of 5)