Today, we wanted to share with you the recording of Jonathan Carroll‘s virtual event with Mysterious Galaxy, which was held in celebration of MR. BREAKFAST‘s publication for which Carroll was joined by author Dan Chaon.

MR. BREAKFAST is Carroll’s highly-anticipated and critically-acclaimed new novel, published 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.

And here is just a small selection taken from the great reviews the novel has received so far…

‘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

‘[Carroll] has been winning awards for his elegantly spooky magical-realist fantasies since his 1980 debut, The Land of Laughs. His first novel since 2014 plays with ideas about fate, choice, art and love… Every bit as inventive and engaging as the best of his earlier novels, and still with a sinister edge, this is more dream than nightmare, and a pure delight to read.’ — Guardian

‘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

‘… 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 (Gary K. Wolfe)

‘[A]nother winner from one of our best fabulists… Carroll is compared with Haruki Murakami almost as often as he’s called a writer’s writer, but the comparison makes intuitive sense. Like Murakami, Carroll is a magical realist, rather than a systematizer or a worldbuilder: The rules of magic and the logic of the supernatural matter less than the mysteries of the heart… I read MR BREAKFAST in three enthralled sittings… The novel thrilled me; it made me reflect on art, love, choices, and regrets; it left me with tears in the corners of my eyes and a smile on my face. What more can a reader ask for? Jonathan Carroll is too good to ever stop being a writer’s writer, but I hope that MR BREAKFAST will make him a reader’s writer too. There are thousands of people who would love this book. I hope they all find it.’ — Tor.com

‘Quick with a label, critics have called Carroll a magic realist, a slipstream novelist, a writer of supernatural thrillers and the creator of modern fairy tales. He does check all these boxes, while remaining elegantly sui generis. His prose is spare, polished and quick-moving, sometimes lightly comic, always immensely engaging. At the same time, his plots — including that of his new novel, MR BREAKFAST — depict the abrupt irruption of the uncanny and terrifying into our familiar workaday world… MR BREAKFAST is the first Carroll novel in several years, but it seems to me as masterly as his earlier books. It will surprise you, make you laugh and scare you — and then, just when you think it’s over, add several extra twists before bringing this Rubik’s Cube of a story to just the right, emotionally muted conclusion.’ — Washington Post