Fever Dream

I'm not sure that I know how to even start thinking about Fever Dream. It is such a sparse and haunting tale. It is a small morsel of a book. 151 pages. 

Fever Dream is written as a conversation. Our main narrator Amanda, is unwell, possibly dying, and lying in an unnamed, under resourced hospital bed in an isolated clinic. At her side is David, a boy, not her son, who is urging her on to tell her story. Here is the story opening, David is in italics, Amanda not. 

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.
It's dark and I can't see. The sheets are rough, they bunch up under my body. I can't move, but I'm talking. 

Amanda and her daughter Nina have recently rented a holiday cottage and things have gone very, very awry. Amanda meets Carla, David's mother, at the holiday house. Carla is a local and tells Amanda of strange local goings on. 

It really isn't clear what is happening throughout the book. Why Amanda is sick. What has happened to children and animals in the local area. And yet Samanta Schweblin creates a wonderful sense of unease and foreboding as the book progresses. I'm not sure that I've ever read anything translated from Spanish before, and I really don't think that I've read an Argentinian author. I do wonder if the names were really Amanda, David, Nina and Carla in the original Spanish, it seems improbable to me. 

I came across Fever Dreams in a few videos recently on Russell's Booktube channel Ink and Paper Blog, where "trippy cloud with horse heads" is as good a summary as anything. So when I found it at Basement Books in Sydney this week (I spend hours in there every time....) I snatched it off the shelves (with quite a few other books it seems) and then read it in my hotel room. 

Fever Dreams was shortlisted for the  2017 Man Booker International Prize. After some moments of confusion I'm not sure that I've ever realised that there is now (and has been for quite some time mind you, over a decade) a Man Booker Prize (books published in English), and a Man Booker International Prize (books translated into English). Très embarrassment. The Guardian recommended an immediate second reading- I do see how that would help. I've only ever done that with one book- The Road, back in 2007. Also read in a hotel room from memory, although in Melbourne. 

One World Publications is a new publisher to me. They have a rather intriguing catalogue of authors and books with lots of translated fiction. But perhaps, they're not completely new to me, I see that I recently bought another one of their titles The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman (mainly on title it must be said), although of course I haven't read it yet. 

You will notice that Fever Dreams is neither Australian, nor Non Fiction (my stated November aims). C'est la vie.