To celebrate the release of Jonathan Carroll‘s highly-anticipated new novel, MR. BREAKFAST, Mysterious Galaxy are hosting a virtual event on January 17th! The author will be in conversation with Dan Chaon, and you can register for the event here.

The novel will be published on January 17th, by Melville House. Here’s the synopsis…

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.

The novel has already received a number of great reviews. Here are just a few of them…

‘Few recent works of fiction in any genre have touched on the vagaries of life, love, and art more movingly or with deeper understanding. An intoxicating, deeply affecting novel by the influential fantasist.’ — Kirkus (Starred Review)

‘A compulsively readable, introspective tale about the road not taken.. At its heart, this is an arresting and imaginative meditation on life. Perfect for fans of magical realism with a free-flowing style like that of David Mitchell and Toshikazu Kawaguchi.’ — Library Journal

‘As always with the exceptionally imaginative Carroll, he creates complex worlds for his hero to inhabit and with clever crossovers between realms that are carefully thought out and fun to explore. Carroll’s attention to details is impressive, and the unexpected prevails.’ — Booklist

‘Jonathan Carroll is one of my favorite living writers. [MR. BREAKFAST is] a  beautiful, brilliant, meditation on art, love, inspiration and what makes life worthwhile. Such a treat.’ — Neil Gaiman

‘Dazzlingly original (it’s Jonathan Carroll, so no surprise there), slyly funny in places, thoughtfully and cleverly rendered, MR. BREAKFAST is an exhilarating and moving meditation on how we deduce what matters most.’ — Amazon Best Books of January 2023

‘MR BREAKFAST is worth the wait… a tale of regret and reincarnation, of second chances arriving perhaps too late. Its narrative strands are folded inside one another and the whole thing is couched in pristine prose. To Carroll, the mundane can yield unexpected delight and danger, making everyday lives fascinating.’ — Financial Times (Best New Science Fiction of January 2023)

‘… unique mixture of the mundane and the metaphysical… sudden time shifts, the nostalgic landscapes of middle America, mysterious tutelary figures, encounters with earlier selves, photographs and tattoos, and, inevitably, very ingratiating dogs. It even includes some subtle allusions to his own earlier work. By any measure, this is vintage Carroll, which is another way of saying it’s entirely new… the sense of infinite possibility – which after all is the main appeal of Road Not Taken stories – is exhilarating, even through the novel’s somber, sad, or occasionally sentimental moments.’ — Locus