“The Ghost in Love” by Jonathan Carroll is an astonishing book. Our book reviewer Jan Mann, variously describes it as “weird” and a “whirlwind of a book,” but also finds it raises some theological questions “that have stumped mankind for ages.” As always, Jen has us intrigued.
As soon as I am done writing this review I am going to go pick up as many of Jonathan Carroll’s books as I can. That is how likable and weird and interesting I found “The Ghost in Love.” How to even describe such a whirlwind of a book?
A man, Ben Gould, is dating the love of his life, German Landis. Actually they have just started dating and as he goes to buy her a dog, Pilot, he slips and hits his head on a curb. The fall kills him.
Wait, the fall is fated to kill him, but he does not die. How is this possible? Over coffee number nine after going to a Carole Lombard film, the Angel of Death and a worker angel ponder this very question.
The angel, Ling, who came to trim the loose ends of Ben’s lost life now is a ghost without a country, so to speak. What to do? The Angel of Death offers workers compensation, a bonus, if the angel will do the job anyway. The angel is now watching Ben. Living with Ben. Falling in love with Ben’s girlfriend.
Well, now it’s an ex- girlfriend. German and Ben share Pilot so the triangle (quadrangle) is not completely severed. Ben is falling apart. From the minute he did not die, he has been seeing things. He has been feeling things that aren’t even his to feel. He gets into the minds of another fake-dead person. He starts to have weird dangerous run-ins with strangely familiar people.
Pilot tells him, yes, tells him, that the dog is the reincarnation of Ben’s dead, former girlfriend. Ling starts cooking amazing meals for German who can not even see them. Ben sees sea monster goo in his tub. This is all before things start to unravel.
You have to have a basic familiarity with the main characters before anything else could begin to make sense, so I’ll leave it at that.
Suffice it to say then that this is a tale of wonder and hilarity on the surface only. Below lurk theological questions that have stumped mankind for ages. Do we have true free-will? What can we really control and how does God factor in at all? What exists outside of our living selves and how much control does it exercise over our destiny?
Jonathan Carroll has some ground-breaking ideas and anyone who has queries or thoughts about what may lie beyond the fray will be overjoyed to find this book.