(Not so) Guilty Pleasures (Literature): A Child Across the Sky

I was introduced to the writing of Jonathan Carroll several decades ago.  His words, unlike many others, live inside you after reading his books.

This  has to be one of my favourite books of all time.  Nightmarish, funny, sexy, intriguing and very very dark with a hint of redemption.  The dialog and characterisation is just....amazing.  Characters like Weber, Sasha and Wyatt are so life like yet perfect in many ways that most of us would never be lucky enough (within our limited lifetimes) to meet people such as them.  However, Philip Strayhorn is made of the worst nightmares.  Evil is a concept, in my opinion, but...temptation and weakness resides in all of us.

A Child Across the Sky.

"Flashing back and forth in time, the story concerns the apparent suicide of filmmaker Philip Strayhorn, whose bizarre Midnight series has attained cult status. Strayhorn's best friend, Weber Gregston, a filmmaker with a more intellectual bent, is drawn into a dizzying series of events by a videotape that Philip leaves him. The wickedly imaginative twists and turns that follow are only one facet of this intriguing tale, which seems at times like a framework on which to hang a myriad of metaphysical notions. What, for instance, is one to make of a tattoo of a crow that comes alive in an airplane lavatory? Carroll's style is elegant; his writing is by turns disturbing, fey, sardonic, grim--frequently within a single paragraph. The unexpected lies at the heart of this novel, and readers seeking a provocative and stimulating--though not always easy--read will be rewarded" (Source)

This book is part of a trilogy that started with Bones of the Moon and ended (in a heartbreaking way but offered us a beautiful and redemptive resolution) with From the Teeth of Angels.  (All of the books can be read in isolation but I highly recommend reading them in order to see how the characters evolve and become entirely different people).

One day, I will get that tattoo of a crow but both of my closest friends have now passed away so it seems a little, "out of time".