OMG! I absolutely LOVED this book! The Book of Dreams is a story to be savored and for me, to read again and again. It is charming, endearing, fascinating, thought-provoking, and ingenious. I felt a range of emotions while reading this book including happy, hopeful, surprised and sad. The Book of Dreams is a compelling story that I could not put down. An added bonus for me is that the writing is beautiful the imagery is divine. George is a master at the effective use of metaphors and similes.
One of the book’s basic premises is that there are different levels of consciousness between life and death. Nurse Marion describes her comatose patients as “Wanderers” and says they live “on the bottom rung of heaven.” I think the primary reason that I found Book of Dreams so compelling was because of all the questions it raises about consciousness, life and death and “living in a coma.” I found it fascinating to ponder all the different theories and ideas that George presents in this book.
“Dr. Saul nods. ‘Yes, Sam. But he is alive, only differently. Do you understand that? In a coma you’re still alive. You’re merely in a particular state. It’s a borderline condition—a crisis, of course, but that doesn’t make that life any less important than the one you or I or Mrs. Tomlin leads. That’s why here we say that someone is living in a coma rather than lying in a coma.’”
“There are a variety of forms of life on the margins of death…”
The book’s sections alternate among three different narrators - Henri (a man who saved a young girl from drowning only to be almost fatally hit by a car), Sam (Henri’s 13 year old estranged son who is a synesthete) and Eddie (Henri’s ex-girlfriend who he designated in his living will). Henri is in a coma, visited everyday by Sam and Eddie who refuse to give up hope. They learn about the different states of consciousness that Henri may be passing through though they cannot know for certain which place he is in at any given moment.
“If waking and sleeping and coma aren’t states but places, then my father is currently on a journey between those places. Or worlds. Or zones that get darker and darker, the closer they are to death.”
“Hoping that just once he will approach the waking zone, through all the different levels and zones and degrees of darkness, via the staircases and corridors that appear abruptly through the fog of medication and dreams, allowing him for a few short moments to navigate a path through all the intermediate zones between waking and death, and surface.”
“My father was somewhere beyond dreams.”
We are privy to Henri’s inner world — his recollections, thoughts, feelings, and what he is currently experiencing/hearing. We learn about the different paths his life could have taken and their respective outcomes. Is Henri traveling through his memories? Is he lost without a way to return to consciousness?
“‘Henri! It’s not so easy to get back. You’ll get lost in the middle. In the middle of everything, do you understand?’”
“‘Oh, Henri. You’re still caught in between everything, between different times and different paths.’”
Eddie and Sam wonder if there is a way they can help to bring Henri back? They are desperate and willing to try anything.
“I learn to call Henri by his name, repeatedly, because a person’s name is the ‘longest fishing line,’ as Nurse Marion puts it, to reel them back from whichever depths they’re swimming in.”
“An aroma is the most effective voice in the wilderness of wandering souls. Fragrances can apparently reach the level where the comatose reside.”
Does Henri want to come back? Is he aware of where he is and what is happening to hijm?
“Being in a coma is like being buried alive, and nobody knows that I’m here. Here! What happens if they never hear me? If they think I’ve died? If they bury me alive? I can’t go on, I don’t want to go on.”
The Book of Dreams raises all sorts of intriguing questions, such as do comatose people perceive everything around them? Do they struggle to “stay afloat”? Can they communicate through Dreams? Can they communicate with other comatose people? Can there be multiple realities at the same moment? Are there parallel universes?
“There is a tear in reality. Through the tear I spot women and men in blue smocks, bending over me, and beyond them I see a boy staring at me. I had it before. I had it but it was too big for me to cling on to. The ‘in-between’ zone.”
“This world is dying. I’m falling into the silence beyond the void. I’m falling and . . .”
Thank you to Crown Publishing and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest review.
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