E-book ( )

Very Connie Willis, and a surprisingly powerful little book. I read it when I was living in rural northern Virginia and spending a lot of time pretending to be knowledgeable about local history at my public library job, so the Civil War trivia and depictions of small town Virginia made me smile. ( )

I had a few problems with this book, but not because the American Civil War is an unfamilar subject (being British, I am far more familiar with the English Civil War which took place in the 17th century).

The male protagonist is Jeff, an historical researcher who works for a somewhat eccentric novelist called Broun. Broun is currently reworking a novel about a young man called Ben who was a participant in a Civil War battle. Broun can't let the novel go and is reworking it despite it being set in galleys (this being the pre-digital publishing days, changes at this stage were very expensive and could be charged to the author). Meanwhile he also shows interest in rekindling an old project around Abraham Lincoln, and he sets Jeff various tasks: to find out about Lincoln's supposed presient dreams about his own assassination and to find out where Lincoln's young son was buried before his body was disinterred to be buried alongside Lincoln after the latter's death.

Broun invites an old room-mate of Jeff's to the prelaunch party for his novel, wanting to question him about dreams. Richard is now a doctor specialising in sleep disorders and he brings with him a young woman called Annie, passing her off as his girlfriend when really she is his patient. It soon transpires that he has been committing various breaches of professional conduct, by sleeping with her among other things. Annie comes across from her first appearance as rather a basket case and didn't win my sympathy when she systematically destroyed an African violet. She is in Richard's "care" because she has been having disturbing dreams, and when she tells Jeff about them, he recognises elements pertaining to General Robert E Lee. Soon it transpires that she is having dreams for Lee who suffered from insomnia, somehow between time periods or - more unbelievably - that she is helping him dream and therefore atone or somehow come to terms with his having led so many young men to their deaths. But he is having these dreams after he is dead. And this ends up being linked with Lincoln, in the sense that his dead son was sending him dreams it seems..

Apart from the unconvincing nature of the underlying premis, another major problem is the characters, especially Annie who is by turns irritating and a doormat. She is not only subservient to Richard who has been drugging her without her permission - and with disastrous results it later transpires - but also to General Lee, when she later refuses to stop dreaming for him out of some inexplicable loyalty. In the scenes between her and Jeff, I found her reminiscient of an emotional vampire, as he falls for her but ends up as a caregiver rather than lover. Richard meanwhile inexplicably veers from one self-serving and beligerent stance to another, with no real explanation of why, other than he is fanatically determined, for no given reason, to stop Annie dreaming at all costs. This is the plot device that drives Jeff to take Annie on the run to get away from him, but the whole thing remains very unbelievable.

Another major issue with the story is the elephant in the room: slavery. Even I know that the American Civil War was fought over that, with the North opposing it and the South wanting to retain it, presumably for economic reasons. Despite the whole novel revolving around the Civil War - including extracts from Broun's novel slotted in when Jeff and Annie spend part of their time away proofreading it (!) - there isn't one single reference to the subject. No slaves are shown in the novel within a novel even in scenes where they might be expected to appear such as when Ben is being treated in a southern states hospital. The complete absence of the reason why the whole war was being fought was akin to writing a novel set in WWII Germany without showing a single Jewish character. So I found that extremely odd. Presumably it is because showing slavery would intefere with the portrayal of Lee as a sympathetic character, given that he is leading a fight to retain such an awful system. Instead he is portrayed as loyal, dutiful and someone who inspires deep loyalty from his troops, plus is kind to horses.

Each chapter is prefaced with some information about Lee's favourite horse, Traveller, and I did find that interesting though the horse's ultimate fate is sad. However it is downright odd that at the end of the book Jeff is viewing himself as Traveller and Annie as Lee. It was a very odd ending. It is also very odd that the book disappoints expectation by not really being about Lincoln's Dreams at all, but about Lee's.

So given all these problems, I can only rate this as a rather disappointing 'OK' read - 2 stars. ( )

140

Para Jeff Johnston, un joven que investiga datos históricos para un famoso novelista especializado en la guerra de Secesión norteamericana, la realidad se redefine una fría noche de invierno en la que conoce a Annie, una joven melancólica y encantadora que sufre vívidas e intensas pesadillas. En una apasionada odisea emocional, Jeff conduce a Annie a través de los campos de batalla de la guerra de Secesión, mientras su amada sigue soñando lo que parecen ser los sueños de personajes importantes en la contienda de hace más de cien años. Una inteligente investigación sobre el sueño y la guerra y, al mismo tiempo, la conmovedora relación de dos enamorados obsesionados y misteriosamente unidos por las indestructibles cadenas de la historia.