Brother Carnival - by Dennis Must (Paperback)

About the Book

Brother Carnival is the tale of a narrator's anguished quest to find a missing brother by probing that sibling's story excerpts for clues as to his whereabouts, while on a more arresting level the novel portrays the odyssey of one who is reconciling to his lost self.

Book Synopsis

Ethan Mueller, the narrator of Brother Carnival, has suffered a crisis of faith and is on the brink of taking his own life when he is informed by his father that he has an estranged brother who is an author. Whereupon he is handed a collection of his sibling's stories and novel excerpts and urged to seek him out. "These stories are his effort to find you, Ethan. He's been where you are now. Seek him out but it won't be easy." In effect, "Christopher Daugherty's" writings function as the protagonist's brother in absentia, thus creating the "dialogue" and suspenseful interplay between them. By immersing himself in the pieces, Ethan Mueller's pursuit of his brother is a quest to discover himself.

Review Quotes

https: //dactylreview.com/2019/02/19/brother-carnival/

"Brother Carnival is a fiercely engaging literary work. As the author plays with time and character, the reader enters a special world of space and time, almost a quantum universe, where characters can be in two places at the same time--or can they? Laced with an intense investigation into the nature of divinity and deities, Brother Carnival weaves an impressive litany of human weakness into the warp-quest for the divine. These lines define the nature of Our Problem: "I read the monks' lamentations as the yearning of the consecrated to hoist themselves out of their bones, their flesh, which burdened their souls and hindered them from ascending to another place. I envisioned them dragging their bodies about like veritable crosses." Visual, suggestive, evocative, this is a novel you read without stopping. Dennis Must finds new borders to cross and new minds to inhabit. Let yours be one of them." --Jack Remick, author of The California Quartet, Gabriella and the Widow, Blood, et al.

"Brother Carnival is one wild ride, not unlike at a real carnival. The tale of two brothers who are caught in their anguished dance toward and away from each other...brings to mind Hawthorne as well as Goethe's Walpurgis Night, and the suite of chapters starting with Holy Schlitz: Mordant. Hilarious. Painful. Satisfying. Bizarre. And in a way, endearing. I applaud the work. It's unlike anything else I've ever read and has a strong narrative pull." -- Geoffrey Clark, author of Two Too Lilly White Boys, Wedding in October, Necessary Deaths, Jackdog Summer, et al.