Mr. Breakfast
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
From one of the great modern masters of the fantastic, “A beautiful, brilliant, meditation on art, love, inspiration and what makes life worthwhile."-- Neil Gaiman
"[Carroll's] prose is spare, polished and quick-moving, sometimes lightly comic, always immensely engaging... Mr. Breakfast is pure pleasure to read. It will surprise you, make you laugh and scare you — and then, just when you think it’s over, add several extra twists." - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
Graham Patterson’s life has hit a dead end. His career as a comedian is failing. The love of his life recently broke up with him and he literally has no idea what to do next. With nothing to lose, he buys a new car and hits the road, planning to drive across country and hopefully figure out his next moves before reaching California.
But along the way Patterson does something his old self would never have even considered: he gets tattooed by a brilliant tattoo artist in North Carolina. The decision sets off a series of extraordinary events that changes his life forever in ways he never could have imagined. Among other things, Patterson is gifted with the ability to see in real time three different lives that are available to him. The choice is his: The life he is leading right now, or two very different ones. In all of them there is love or fame and of course danger because once he has chosen, there is no telling what will happen next.
Mr. Breakfast is a dazzling, absorbing and deeply moving novel about the choices that we have to confront and face, confirming Jonathan Carroll’s status as one of our greatest and most imaginative storytellers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This self-congratulatory contemporary fantasy from Carroll (Bathing the Lion) follows comedian-turned-photographer Graham Patterson as he explores the alternate directions his life could take. While fleeing from his comedy career on a road trip across the U.S., Patterson impulsively gets a tattoo from Anna Mae Collins. Soon thereafter, he starts to see "mirror versions" of himself, first witnessing himself get kidnapped. Collins conveniently returns to explain that the "Breakfast Tattoo" Patterson selected gives the bearer the ability to observe, and ultimately choose between, three different versions of his own life. Carroll takes pains to assure the reader that the protagonist's jokes are funny and his photographs magnificent, and the narrative frequently stalls to explain the message of a scene through heavy-handed metaphor, leaving little room for imagination or interpretation. Together with a stable of female characters almost universally concerned with motherhood, and disabled characters built on tired stereotypes (a "spooky" blind person, a murderous schizophrenic, and a burdensome autistic child), it makes for a turgid reading experience. While the alternate realities deliver some genuine surprises alongside the occasional heartfelt meditation on the randomness of life and the futility in trying to control it, the whole is too trite to be very thought provoking. All but Carroll's most devoted fans can skip this.
