The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll was an interesting story. I really liked the idea behind it. The main character is chief of police in a small town in New York. One day a three legged dog is found in a grocery store parking lot. No one knows what to do with the dog so they bring it to the police station. Frannie, the police chief brings the dog into his office. Goes and buys him food, dishes, and a blanket and let's the dog hang out with him while he tries to figure out what to do. But as he is talking about the dog with his family the dog dies. And Frannie's life will never be the same.
I liked this story up until the end. It wasn't a bad end. It was just not a really satisfying end. The author gets you thinking about all sorts of things, time, love, aging, the universe, god, you name it, he gives you something to think long and hard about. But the end just sort of ends. Maybe he intended it to be that way. After all, we don't have answers to the great questions so why would he provide one? So maybe, as I think about it, it wasn't so bad after all.
1 comment:
The end of THE WOODEN SEA is not meant to "end," as you put it. The protagonist, in one of his incarnations, is told that we must go through version after version of ourselves until we do life "right" and then we have completed the job. McCabe the policeman almost did it right, but not quite. That is why young Gee Gee must take his place and try again. The whole book is full of cycles-- birth and death, youth(Gee Gee) and maturity (Frannie), his wife and her daughter, Frannie and his father... And as we know, cycles and circles just keep spinning, they never come to an end as such. THE WOODEN SEA is one of my favorite books and I must have read it now three times. I've also given away many copies to people I think it will tell something to about life. It certainly told me a lot.
Neil Cameron
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