Friday Friyay: Samanta Schweblin's 'Fever Dream'

It's my first Friday back in Europe for an extended work/vacation trip and I think I've just about gotten used to the time difference and the fact that it's still so dark here every morning! I'd just about forgotten that since it feels like it's always light at 6am in Shanghai. Anyway, let's get this Friday show on the road with Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. Today I'm featuring Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream. I adored her short story collection, Mouthful of Birds, it was one of my favourites this year, so I jumped on this book the moment I found it. 

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. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.

Perfect Christmas read, no?

BB:

'They're like worms.
What kind of worms?
Like worms, all over.
It's the boy who's talking, murmuring into my ear. I am the one asking questions.
Worms in the body?
Yes, in the body.
Earthworms?
No, another kind of worms.' 1%

Usually I make the whole quote italic and indented, but this is how it was in the novel and I wanted to keep the format. I like the interplay between the voices, how we initially don't know who is who until she clarifies for us. It's also already addressed one of my least  favourite things ever, the feeling that something is crawling on or, even worse, in you.

F56:

'Your mother tells me that the dog made it to the stairs of your house, and sat there for almost a whole afternoon. She says she asked you about the dog several times, and each time you replied that the dog wasn't the important thing.' 56%

I didn't include the rest of the paragraph because it felt slightly spoiler-y and sad. I haven't reached this far into the book yet, but I'm curious what this section is about. I'm thinking this will be a metaphor for something she has left behind, perhaps a certain loyalty or trust. Or maybe it's just a really sad moment in which she ignores her dog.


And as always, there is the gem that is Book Blogger Hop, hosted over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.

           

Book Blogger Hop

Do you keep your TBR book stack on a separate shelf from your already read books or are they mixed? - Elizabeth @ Silver Reviews 

Since I mostly read on my Kindle these days, my TBR stack is a digital one. I do have a separate collection for my TBR NetGalley reads, and I move them to a "read" collection once I'm done. But everything else is just in thematic folders and all mixed up. I enjoy trawling through books to find the one I want to/have to read. 

When it comes to the physical books, my apartment unfortunately doesn't have a proper bookshelf, so they are all jumbled together on different window sills, tables and even on boxes made to look like furniture. I kind of love the scattered aesthetic though, I can find a book at any random moment and get lost in it. And that's how I like it!