She takes liberties with and completely dismisses traditional narrative forms to create a succinct, jarring story arc. This is a license Schweblin takes seriously. As in a literal fever dream, the constraints, rules and logic of reality are manipulated ignored, and irrelevant here. Scenes form, then dissolve, as if with great discomfort. In the absence of any authoritative narrator, three additional characters-Amanda’s daughter Nina, and David’s parents, Carla and Oscar-complete the skeletal cast. And while we wait, we have to find the exact moment when the worms come into being.” “ It’s the worms,” David insists to Amanda, before framing the focus of Schweblin’s narrative: “ You have to be patient and wait. I can’t move, but I’m talking.Īmanda’s interior thoughts appear occasionally, but the story is left to be recalled by these two. The sheets are rough, they bunch up under my body. It’s the boy who’s talking, murmuring into my ear. Their opening conversation, in interview format, continues, with David inquiring: David and Amanda’s dialogue forms and drives the narrative of this tense, dark domestic tale-equal parts fable and fantasy, dream and horrific yet elusive nightmare. The narrative is so stripped of identifying information-time, location, sentiment-that it feels, at moments, like a closet drama. These words are spoken to Amanda, a grown woman who is dying, by David, a child at her side in an anonymous hospital. The tautness and concision of the short unsettling novel Fever Dream is evident even from its cryptic opening sentence: They’re like worms.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |