Fever Dream

Brilliant, concise. Woman and child, from any big city (but probably Buenos Aires), arrive at a vacation house along a river. Husband will join them for the weekend. Neighbor wearing a gold bikini brings them a bucket of water, says not to drink the tap water; it smells bad. But they already have, just a little when they arrived thirsty. Every genre, even horror, has great writers. The resources of our world have largely been destroyed. No where to hide. Fictional version of Blowout by Rachel Maddow. As I go into Month 5 of coronavirus lockdown, hidden away in the desert like one of a friend's rescue dogs, lines from Fever Dreams surface. Pay attention. Things that look like nothing (sitting on damp grass) are important. My friend's desperate need for social interaction. Okay, she is invested in being kind but why is Friend in our tiny Post Office lobby talking to the one man in town who tested positive for the virus? Why does his mask not cover his nose? He says masks are to block sputum from spraying. But the disease gets into the vascular system through the lungs, air going in and out through nose and mouth. Has she contracted the disease? Will she bring it home? She and I are wearing masks. Is that enough? Is my throat a little sore? My pandemic mantra is that I am safe and have a roof over my head. The second half is true. Is the woman in the book hallucinating her mother and son friends? Am I hallucinating the danger? Is neighbor downplaying the danger so he can go inside the Post Office and the Store? We had to do a 14 day self-quarantine when I returned from overseas, driven back from a country that didn't have much of a problem then and has a huge problem now. Did he? My friend in Belarus saying a huge number of children have birth defects from Chernobyl. Chernobyl is fuming again but wasn't when I was there. Planetary pandemics. The places I paid for but now cannot get to. The crazy college kids who went to Mexico anyway. Death. Long term medical conditions. Student who tested positive but has no symptoms so he doesn't care. My lost travel deposits and purchases. Collapsed businesses, lost jobs, corruption. Suddenly the best you can hope for is to be safe and have a roof over your head.

It's one of those rare books that brought out a physiological response in me. The idea of rescue distance really moved me. A quick, satisfying read.

This book is truly unique from any of the books I have read so far. It's like being part of a nightmare and totally engulfs you.

This book was haunting. I read it in one sitting.

It was the shortest book/novella I have read in a while. It is a fast-paced, compulsive read. Hence, it is no surprise that I finished it in less than three hours. It is a story exploring motherhood and consanguineous ties in a dystopia. On reading the story, I felt the author was strongly influenced by the environmental disasters caused by human actions. The ecological dimension of it reminded me of the calamity that struck Chernobyl and its neighbouring settlements. Unsurprisingly, she was successful in charting a story that echoes the tragedy of science, experimentation and development. However, I felt the story was too rushed. I could feel a sense of something amiss by the hurried beginning and ending of the story. The author could have dealt upon some interesting themes that she picked out within the relationships of the characters. Additionally, the pace of the book also had me confused in understanding what the characters are up to. I felt there were too many characters for so short a story. Nonetheless, the book impressed me with the writing (its translation) and its capacity to keep me hooked to the prose until the last page.