- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd; First Edition edition (14 May 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0719557623
- ISBN-13: 978-0719557620
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.3 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,806,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Life has not always been harmonious at 12, Wagner Rise. But for the past seven years, philosopher extraordinaire Oliver Gold has caused an entire extended family to stop quarrelling among themselves and turned their huge North London home into a cosy, if odd, ménage. How has this seemingly asexual individual accomplished this feat? By using the best tactic on tap--making them all fall in love with him, from the ageing matriarch to a pair of lesbian lovers to a 10-year-old girl named Bobs. Alas, things go entirely out of whack when Oliver reveals--or has young Bobs announce--his engagement, and to a rather mousy American named Camilla of all people!
Dream Children would seem on a par with Iris Murdoch's searching and satirical dissections of the socially and intellectually gifted. But A.N. Wilson opens his novel with a more contemporary (and more American) spectacle: a recovered- memory trial in which a middle-aged woman claims she was raped at 6. "It was one of those cases which divided the nation. Those of the conservative disposition felt that the plaintiff was hysterical, probably deluded, certainly, which amounted to something pretty similar, female." And paedophilia, it turns out, is at the heart of Wilson's 17th fiction. Oliver Gold's purity of thought and word are in no way matched by his deeds and desires.
Owing to his own early encounters, our antihero has decided he can only be happy with a child, "a little dream lover". And until Bobs he has lived inside his head, with a little help from Lewis Carroll et al. But 12, Wagner Rise turns out to be the ideal love nest: "What began to unfold was the most delicious danger, the most heart-rending miracle. Now, looking back, he did not choose to put dates on the affair or ask himself when it had all begun. It was the central fact of his life, the knowledge that he and Bobs were made for each other." Oliver may be able to rationalize himself through--and others into--almost anything, but his fellow homesteaders are equally (though not so antisocially) self-deluded. The author has the right, light touch with his emotionally injured and injuring man of intellect, and the ironies reverberate throughout his disturbingly delightful book (one reason Dream Children is unlikely to be an Oprah® pick). Oliver's fiancée, for instance, tells her visiting, and appalled, mother, "If that man didn't want a kid of his own, I don't know who does!" Some readers may consider A.N. Wilson's approach far too clever, and cold, for this emotive subject, but he doesn't need to hammer his moral point home. His intricate narrative and chilling conclusion do so with artistic aplomb. --Kerry Fried
Anita Brookner
A hypnotic storyteller who leaves in his wake a trail of curiosity and unease'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
It was Bobs who broke the news to the three of them, to her mother, her grandmother, and to Catharine Cuffe: to the quorum, one might say. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
It was Bobs who broke the news to the three of them, to her mother, her grandmother, and to Catharine Cuffe: to the quorum, one might say. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel, though carefully written, leaves to much room for speculation and therefore lacks the intensity of, for instance, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. However, the plot ends in a much happier way than Lolita, because neither lover dies nor is jailed. If the final outcome of Lolita was mainstream society 1 - 0 pedophiles (poor Humbert Humbert), for Dream Children it would get even: mainstrem society 1 - 1 pedophiles...Interesting read anyway.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Well written disturbing book with open questions
31 Jan 2000
Format:Hardcover
Ok. Five stars for the story - not for the main object. And (I've got the hard-cover) no stars for the bookbinding - it was the very first book I was supposed to cut the pages even. Oliver, the philosopher with the high-flying mind and the unability for normal social bindings sees himself kindly entrapped in a strange set of adoring women, each eager to use him for her own purpose - to earn social reputation, get some pieces of high-spirited knowledge, get a crumb of love. He is same time comfortable and dissatisfied, until he discovers his love for the child of one of the women, and, because the mother has other things in mind, is then the willing father-substitute. This gives the circle of women more to adore him - and him the chance to live the only love he is really able to - the love to a child. *What* he is doing to and with the child is not the matter of the book (seems to be nothing physical harming), but it was disturbing (for me as a reader) to see that he is not even able to question his view about this relation - and, as so often, for him everything seems to support his view. This narrowed view is uncomfortably human. On the last pages his ex-beloved girl, now adult, seems to be an healthy, unharmed woman, but also this view is questionable, because she seems to be unable to form a 'normal' relationship to another adult, in this story because she knows that no love can be as deep as this she have had in childhood. If you're interested in adult-child-relations far from what is considered 'normal' you may read this book, but don't think it will support pedophilia - the question of harm is not as open as it may seem (here).
Cuttings from recent press reviews of Dream Children
23 May 1998
Format:Hardcover
"Dream Children is brilliantly and mesmerically readable. Wilson has an unfakeable flair for storytelling - I read it virtually in one sitting, missing my stop on the Underground as I did so. I defy any reader, however they feel about the theme or the author's treatment of it, not to be utterly engaged by this book." ... -- The London Evening Standard
"Dream Children, although a work of fiction, attempts to introduce a note of rationality into the debate. To that extent, it is both welcome and timely. [...] The scenario is enough to disturb any reader. It is a measure of Wilson's sureness of touch that he avoids prurience, avoids sensationalism, and makes us look at the situation with the same objectivity as he does. Oliver, palpably, is not a monster. Bobs, palpably, is not left traumatised by the relationship. [...] a brave and dispassionate treatment of a sensitive theme." -- The Daily Telegraph.
"... a novel which struck me as among the cleverest and funniest of the decade." -- Auberon Waugh, in The Sunday Times.
"... a bitter and moral comedy, that makes Lolita look the self-indulgent melodrama it really is." -- The Scotsman.
"Whatever the rights and wrongs, this remains an astonishing novel - lucid, vigorous, uncompromising, and unflaggingly intelligent. It will make Wilson a household name - in many places a detested one. Perhaps this book will be seen by future generations as following in the footsteps of other fictional precursors of social and legal reform, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and many works by Charles Dickens. What seems certain is that anyone who thinks about social issues or wonders about the nature of modern life against the wider backdrop of history, will not rest content until they have read it." -- The South China Morning Post
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful
A STORY THAT PUTS US IN A HORRIFYING PLACE...
16 Jan 2002
Format:Paperback
...into the mind and life of a pedophile. Told from the point of view of Oliver Gold, a seemingly mild-mannered, brilliant writer and philosopher, A. N. Wilson's book does just that -- and it is truly a scary place to visit.
Gold lives in a house of women -- all of whom consider themselves to be free-thinkers. It is the consequence of this self-image that they allow themselves to be taken in emotionally by their male lodger, to the extent that they are unable -- or unwilling -- to see the ongoing relationship he shares with Bobs, a precocious pre-teen girl, the daughter of one of the women in the house. A dark, well-written story with disturbing moral implications, Wilson's novel is one that will -- hopefully -- make most readers uncomfortable to the point that they will do some serious thinking and investigating on their own into the subject of child abuse in our society.
I don't think for a moment that Wilson has made his protagonist seem gentle and harmless, intelligent and ingratiating, in order to make him seem less evil, or to propose in any way whatsoever that this sort of behavior is acceptable -- he's done it in order for us to realize how insidiously a perpetrator such as Gold can 'hide in plain sight'. There are truly monsters such as this who live among us, preying on children. As disturbing as this novel is, maybe it will cause all of us to open our eyes a little wider, to be more watchful and vigilant in protecting those who look to us for care and love.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
