Amazon.co.uk Review
In
Dreaming with Strangers, Matt Thorne--who has already made a big impact with his first two novels
Tourist (which was long-listed for the
Guardian fiction prize) and
Eight Minutes Idle--is back on the terrain of the confused battle of the sexes in early 21st century London.
Chris Paley is a film buff and movie reviewer who is down on his luck after breaking up with his actress girlfriend Diana, unable to "cope with the way Diana handled her depression". Chris goes flat hunting to start again and write a book on romantic movies. "He'd already nearly moved into a flat because there was a Rumble Fish postcard on the fridge so when he noticed a framed Drugstore Cowboy on the bedroom wall" he immediately takes Becca Coles' disused flat. However, when the estate agent tells Becca that Chris, like her, is a film buff, and that "He looks a bit like that guy from The X Files, Becca's curiosity is piqued, and she uses her key to get into her old flat to see just what Chris is all about.
The result is a bitter sweet comedy of manners, as Chris and Becca try to establish a relationship in the midst of meddling friends, ex-girlfriends and cheating boyfriends. What keeps them going is an understanding that "All life is a film", and their attempt to figure out "which film is it?" that scripts their own situation. With shades of Woody Allen, Dreaming of Strangers will please Thorne's growing band of admirers, but may well turn off those who don't spend all their time going to the movies. --Jerry Brotton
Product Description
Becca Coles is a cinema buff in her late twenties. So is Chris Paley. Becca sees herself as a femme fatale (more Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction than Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction ). Chris, a movie reviewer, has recently given up action films for romantic comedies and is writing a book on love in the movies. Becca is in a relationship. Chris has just finished one. They have never met. When Becca rents her flat out to Chris via an estate agent friend, everything changes. Soon she's snooping around the flat while Chris is out watching previews. She then sets up a chance romantic encounter with her unwitting tenant. But after Becca has taken to surreptitiously trailing Chris, he begins to suspect that his life has been scripted out for him, and when he starts trailing her it leads to an unexpected finale... A love story played out between two people fascinated by film, Dreaming Of Strangers explores the tension between romance and real life, examining whether it's possible to experience the fantasy life of a favourite movie, or if reality is always destined to disappoint.
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