Oli Johns starts his books with a pile of self-critical nonsense 'praise' ['Mostly miserable.' – Topher Grace] so I think I will start off with some real praise "The most exciting, naive, honest, compassionate, self-indulgent writer writing today."

I think that was praise.

Charcoal is his new book. It's a basically autobiographical story about Johns' flirtations with suicide, his love of life, his desire to avoid 'abnormal success' and his trip back through time to rescue a South Korean model from hanging herself in Paris.

It's pretty short. You could practically perform it as a one-man show. It has a lot of performance characteristics: short repetitive sentences, naturalistic dialog. It's a game of two halves. First half is naturalistic: Johns deals with depression and suicidal curiosity by screwing teenagers and playing charcoal suicide at Hong Kong honeymoon hotels. He also goes to the library and says something extremely true.

I'm going to write about philosophy.

I'm gonna think it out and write about it.

…

But the words are strange.

Not strange, but difficult.

Not difficult, but…

…

I don't understand philosophy.

…

I don't think anyone else does either.

Do they?

Then he decides he wants to save an already dead woman. Fortunately he is able to do that because, thanks to the help of Jack Nicholson and the River Seine he is able to prove that time is an illusion.

He comes up with an idea to guide himself and the model  to a life that "might not be super happy, but…okay." He wants her to make dolls [kind of like he makes her.] And if the rest of reality had not collapsed into a J G Ballard short story at about that time… he might have gotten away with it.

So that's what it is about. Is it good? Yeah, it's very good. He has stripped away the layer of self satire of his previous [pseudonymous] novel "Benny Platonov" and it might be uncomfortable for some people to read a book that is lacking almost entirely in pretension. Yeah, a book where the lead character spends a lot of his time trying to invent a new philosophy [or possibly two] and rubbishing great writers and living in a little fairy tale, but it's not pretentious.

I think about half the people who read this book will drop it as a half-baked notebook doodle. Fair enough… screw them. They already dropped out of reading the review anyway, I bet. What are they reading now? An over-edited novel full of rich characterization and deep social understanding? Sounds awesome….

Anyway, look. There are a lot of books, y'know. The ones I like more than the others are the ones that reach a beautiful compromise with meaninglessness. This is one of those books.

I run back down the hill and into the estate and see kids messing around on the tennis court.

I don't want to die.

I love life.

The kids pull down the net and point fingers at each other, each one laughing.

I laugh too.

I fucking love life and I never want it to end.

The eBook version of this book is now available in all the major formats for $2.99 via Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25578

The print edition will be published on November 1st by Eight Cuts press and you can only get it from them. The initial print run will also include limited edition versions, hand numbered with extra material. The UK price is 6 pounds, but they will send it anywhere. They really care about their books.

Details at http://eightcuts.wordpress.com/collaborate/coming-in-2010/charcoal-by-oli-johns/