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Title: BLACK COCKTAIL by Jonathan Carroll ISBN: 0-7126-2164-4 Publisher: Random House UK Distribution Pub. Date: 15 October, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1

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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (4 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: Very diappointing
Comment: I understand the novella Black Cocktail is only 76 pages long and can't be considered in the same league as Carroll's novels (which I love) - but this was very disappointing.

It's as if Carroll, unable to sleep one night, sat down to write a novel, changed his mind, dashed off these pages, and published them without looking them over (or passing them to an editor to read.)

Familiar characters and themes without any new revelations...and an ending that seems to have been drawn from a tired mind. I'll keep it along with his other books, but will probably never read this again.

Rating: 2
Summary: Black Cocktail
Comment: I was enjoying this freaky little tale up until the last twenty pages, when it just flew apart like confetti.

The story is about Ingram, who is being manipulated by two former school-chums turned enemies, Michael and Clinton. These two both enter Ingram's life at about the same time--a vulnerable time for Ingram who has just lost his lover to a terrible accident--and they both introduce Ingram to a shocking world of strange fantasy. But what is strange, and what is strange-but-true!--is Clinton really stuck at the age of fifteen because of one mistake he made at that age, which he wouldn't have made if he weren't looking out for Michael? Is Michael the one vandalizing Ingram's home in vile ways, and is his mind-boggling tale about Clinton really true?

All fair and compelling conundrums up til the very end, and then in the last twenty pages the book goes berserk. As far as I'm concerned, the author tries to jam an incredibly complex bit of supernatural explanation into far too few pages. The book turns itself upside-down, and goes from zero to two-hundred in a microsecond. I for one did not find it brilliant, so much as too much. Does the bulk of the book prepare the reader for the end? You can decide for yourself. I felt like I fell off a cliff. To put it in more concrete terms: I knew I was being pulled into a story that was slowly becoming more and more bizarre--there festers this seething sense that, yes, the explanations are going to be weird and deliciously otherworldly--but suddenly I felt whapped in the face with a magic sledgehammer. Motoring along nicely, motoring along nicely, powerful narrative that has a sinister aura percolating, motoring along nicely, and--BAM!--digestallthisfreakyweirdstuffreallyreallyfastbecuzzzzzzzzzzzznowit'sover!!

This burst the book for me. Wonderful throughout, amazingly ruined with an ending that just stomps in and tries to be impressive and weirdly philosophical, and I'm still waiting for the big purple literary bruise on my brain to heal.

Rating: 5
Summary: another gem from Carroll
Comment: I'm on a quest now to acquire all of Carroll's books since they tend to go out of print quickly, at least in the United States (he lives in Vienna and his books are big sellers in Europe). I just got a copy of Black Cocktail which I had never read and was again blown away by his imagination and story-telling ability. He gets this idea from Plato -- that all humans originally were joined to another being and spend the rest of their lives looking for their other half (also Plato's explanation for sexual preference as those that started as two men obviously look for the male half). Only Carroll makes it the perfect 5 (i.e. everyone used to be 5 people connected) and has his usual interesting and quirky characters trying to reunite. This is only a 75 page novella, but it has all the classic Carroll elements. Read it!