Literary Vice

I made a mistake in telling a few friends to read Eric Puchner’s Dream State when I was only a third of the way in. It’s such a strong start – evocative writing, a pulling theme (how does one major decision or one major event shape the rest of your life?), interesting characters. Set amid the present and near future of climate catastrophe to make the aging of the characters over the course of the novel vivid against what can feel in our incremental experience of time unnoticed in the sharp changes for the reader between decades for a glacier or a lake or an endangered species.

And it’s not like the writing changed – the scene on the mountain with Elias is haunting and beautiful – it’s more I lost conviction that I knew why any of the characters were making any of their decisions. I suspect it’s a form thing – with the big jumps in time (with the exception of one incredible passage where the two children age together over summers over the course of the passage and the reader feels the slipperiness of time in the verb tenses and the dialogue) happen between chapters the reader is given snapshot moments to make sense of Big character decisions, and honestly, so much happens ‘off stage’ that it’s hard to believe the impact of those decisions on the characters and how they behave next. We have to take it on the faith of third person narration that yes, indeed, Garret and Cece still love on another because that’s what a long marriage means? I guess?

So sorry to M. and K. for forcefully recommending this one before reaching the end. If you haven’t yet started it, I’d say it would be a fine beach read, but not something I’d interrupt a year of comic book reading to go out and get.