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Overview
Harry Radcliffe is a brilliant prize-winning architect—-witty and remarkable. He's also a self-serving opportunist, ready to take advantage of whatever situations, and women, come his way. But now, newly divorced and having had an inexplicable nervous breakdown, Harry is being wooed by the extremely wealthy Sultan of Saru to design a billion-dollar dog museum. In Saru, he finds himself in a world even madder and more unreal than the one he left behind, and as his obsession grows, the powers of magic weave around him, and the implications of his strange undertaking grow more ominous and astounding....
Synopsis
A novel of love, death, and architecture
Publishers Weekly
If you didn't know that Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym, you might wonder if this Carroll ( A Child Across the Sky ) might be a relative. He, too, uses fanciful jests to point up common absurdities and makes fantasy seem altogether tangible. Here his narrator is a curmudgeonly genius, the aphorizing architect Harry Radcliffe, who, with the aid of a maverick therapist, has recently recovered from a mental collapse and is ready to reexamine his constructs of reality. He's also rebounding from an amicable divorce and conducts affairs with two fabulous females. Various developments--including an earthquake from which Radcliffe's party is miraculously rescued by a Middle Eastern sultan and the therapist's dog--oblige Radcliffe to accept the sultan's commission to build a vast dog museum. When war breaks out in the sultan's realm and he is killed, his son--a romantic rival for one of Radcliffe's lady loves--presses Radcliffe to build the museum on his property in Austria and promises to pay in magic. After further astonishing feats (leaping into other identities, the momentary reincarnation of the dead, etc.) the picaresque tone, surprisingly, yields at the end to a reprise of a biblical theme, turning this spirited novel into something like a moral tale. (Feb.)
Editorials
From the Publisher
"If you didn't know that Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym, you might wonder if this Carroll might be a relative. He, too, uses fanciful jests to point up common absurdities and makes fantasy seem altogether tangible."Publisher's Weekly on Outside the Dog Museum"I envy anyone who has yet to enjoy the sexy, eerie and addictive novels of Jonathan Carroll. They are delicious treats—with devilish tricks inside them"Michael Dirda of the Washington Post on Outside the Dog Museum
"Jonathan Carroll has the magic. He'll lend you his eyes, and you will never see the world in quite the same way ever again."—-Neil Gaiman
"Carroll's work is unlike any other's. When you start one of his novels or short stories, your every instinct is going to lead you in the wrong direction—-sooner rather than later, the book or story is going to turn itself inside out and leave you gasping."—-Peter Straub
"Carroll is one of my heroes. For the freedom he gives himself to crowd his pages with imagined and observed reality, cheek to jowl. For his readiness to be silly right after he's broken your heart. He's really created a unique style—-sexy, playful, and mordant all at once."—-Jonathan Lethem