Mr Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll (Melville House, £20)
Carroll, an American long resident in Vienna, 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 through the story of Graham Patterson, failed standup comedian and – despite his many appealing attributes – also a failure at lasting relationships. Following an impulsive decision to get a tattoo, he gains the magical ability to observe two other lives he could have had, with the option to trade his present situation for one of them. It seems he can have love or fame but not both, and as he puts off his decision, his story, and the world around him, get ever stranger. 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.
