This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I first read and finished Su 1/16/00. The flyleaf reads: "Read in one day. Off tomorrow. Feel like I'm coming down with cold/flu. Nice read. Bought yesterday- main branch, 50 cents".
However, I refinished the book on Su 10/29/17, and I really, really loved it! I guess the tip off should have been that the first time through, I read it in one day. This time it took two, but I finished in one three hour stretch on the living room couch yesterday.
"Jonathan Samuel Carroll (born January 26, 1949) is an American fiction writer primarily known for novels that may be labelled...
MAGIC REALISM...
SLIPSTREAM...
CONTEMPORARY FANTASY".
The Plot-
Max Fischer
Lily and Lincoln Aaron
The book is kind of a simple story that goes completely off the rails, not once- but twice.
Max is a successful cartoonist, single and OK with this, and one day at an art exhibition (some of his work is featured) he meets the woman, and her ten year old son, that fulfill all of his romantic dreams. The three of them are so perfectly matched that their worlds change from black and white to Technicolor the moment that they meet. Months later, Max learns a truth that brings it all down.
Lily is a monster. She had kidnapped Lincoln when he was just a small baby. And, this family never forgot and never gave up hope that someday their missing child would come back home.
SECOND IMPLOSION-
The novel skips to the future. Lincoln is now seventeen and he's turned into a surly punk (FUCK DANCE, LET'S FUCK; tee shirt) and it seems that all the excellent parenting of Max and Lily has been worthless.
Lincoln learns that he's not Lily's son and returns to his birth family to wreak havoc. Max follows, but is too late to stop the violence.
TWIST-
Lincoln's real birth parents are not the people that Lily claimed in the first place. The family that Lincoln visits has a son that was kidnapped, but this boy was reunited with his parents. Lincoln burns down their house and beats up the boy anyway.
TIME TWIST-
On the way from the fire and violence, Max meets Lincoln on the road and in a scene of road-rage madness, Lincoln shoots at Max. This same scene occurred many years before when Max first visited that family that he thought Lily had robbed of their child.
This is a link to Goodreads that has a list of quotes from the author. He has many books, and I plan to read more. I don't think that AFTER SILENCE is even his best work.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23704.Jonathan_Carroll
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