THERE ARE WRITERS WHO WOULD LIKELY get tetchy if you were to frame a conversation about their work in comparison to a hit movie. Not Jonathan Carroll, who is happy to discuss his new novel Mr Breakfast, a tale of characters living out alternate lives, by referencing Sliding Doors, a film that explores two futures that spin out from missing or catching a Tube train.
“It’s a universal thing all of us at one point or another, after about age 30, think: ‘What if I had done this instead of that?’” Carroll says is the perfect example. In that case, it’s forced on [Gwyneth Paltrow’s character], but in our realistic human sense, we make the decisions. to go into the subway car rather than stand on the platform.”
