Carnival Wolves

Alan Johnson is a man ill-at-ease among people and only slightly more comfortable with animals. His story begins in upstate New York with his rescue of an injured Dalmatian who "came down out of the sky and survived the fall, showed me how gradually I have fallen--how I never touch, never really talk to another person...I am hardly a person at all." The dog heals and is returned to its neglectful owner, but Alan Johnson steals it back and heads west in search of what it means to be human.

As he crosses the United States, he moves through landscapes full of animals half-tamed and people run wild: a fanatical taxidermist, a lonely woman raising tigers on her remote ranch, a tragic circus chimp named Rufus, contemporary polygamists, and the caretakers of boot camps for troubled youths. They are Carnival Wolves, manifestations of our attempts to tame what is dangerous and wild, distorted reflections of parts of ourselves.

After a tortuous journey through various states of depravity--and of America--Alan Johnson ends up in California having reached a reconciliation of instincts and having found a human being he can love. A gripping, hallucinatory read, Carnival Wolves is a provocation, a plea for identification that questions the humanity of its readers and confirms Peter Rock as a unique literary talent.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 08/17/1998
ISBN: 9780385492096
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.32h x 5.58w x 0.72d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 06/22/1998 pg. 83
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/1998 pg. 838
Library Journal 07/01/1998 pg. 138
Booklist 08/01/1998 pg. 1969