Fever Dream
by Samanta Schweblin
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Pub Date Mar 02 2017 | Archive Date Jun 19 2017
Description
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child.
The two seem anxious and, at David’s ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past. As David pushes her to recall whatever trauma has landed her in her terminal state, he unwittingly opens a chest of horrors, and suddenly the terrifying nature of their reality is brought into shocking focus.
One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange and deeply unsettling psychological menace in this cautionary tale of maternal love, broken souls and the power and desperation of family.
A Note From the Publisher
Megan McDowell has translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors, and her translations have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's and The Paris Review. She lives in Chile.
Advance Praise
'The genius of Fever Dream is less in what it says than in how Schweblin says it, with a design at once so enigmatic and so disciplined that the book feels as if it belongs to a new literary genre altogether.' The New Yorker
'Mesmerizing… After reading Fever Dream, I wanted Schweblin to let the rope out more. Not because Fever Dream isn’t an almost perfect short novel — because it most certainly is. But because I wanted to see what Schweblin could do when she went deeper into the place where she so skillfully had taken me.' Washington Post
'Samanta Schweblin is one of the most promising voices in modern literature in Spanish.' Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Feast of the Goat
‘A wonderful nightmare of a book: tender and frightening, disturbing but compassionate. Fever Dream is a triumph of Schweblin’s outlandish imagination.’ Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling
‘Fever Dream is a small masterpiece, a beautiful and chillingly contemporary book. Every word throbs a kind of wisdom that can only come from a meticulous and fully engaged observation of reality.’ Alejandro Zambra, author of Multiple Choice and My Documents
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781786070906 |
| PRICE | £12.99 (GBP) |
Links
Featured Reviews
Ursula R, Educator
There is a trapped, uncomprehending and out-of-control feeling throughout the book. It certainly is reminiscent of a fever dream but that's certainly not a sensation I enjoyed revisiting.
There are some beautiful images but some of the phrases felt a little clumsy (reading in English). I read through to the end thinking I would reach some understanding of the elements of body transfer, pollution and protection centred on this small town. But this is not a piece of science fiction and so I failed to slot the puzzle pieces together into a coherent whole as I had hoped.
Gem L T, Reviewer
A woman named Amanda lies in a fever in a rural hospital clinic, A young boy, David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child.
David is prompting Amanda to recount the events that led to her illness, constantly pushing her to fix on the ‘important moment’, the moment when the ‘worms’ got in. Yet for Amanda what is important is where her young daughter Nina is. She talks a lot about the ‘rescue distance’, something most parents are constantly measuring and recalibrating as their children grow. How far away from you are they? Are they close enough to rescue should danger befall them?
As David continues to push her, the horror of the thing that has befallen them is exposed, is there any way back through it? Can Amanda get back to being within rescue distance of Nina?
Samanta Schweblin is a fairly new voice on the Spanish literary scene, her short stories have won critical acclaim but this is her first novel. It was rightfully shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize as it is incredibly evocative. Reading it you feel like you are in a fever dream, nothing is quite where it should be and memories are more vivid than the world around you. This lends itself perfectly to the strange, creeping, psychological menace.
I can’t tell you more of the plot without ruining it for you, but I would definitely recommend you read it if you like books that are a bit weird and that don’t necessarily tie up every loose end for you. This is like that, it’s a melody in a minor key that will keep surfacing in your mind like a memory of illness and loss. It is a tale of maternal love and the power and desperation of family.
Some praise must also go to the translator Megan McDowell.
Five Bites
NB I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review. The BookEaters always write honest reviews.
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