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A review by duggimon
The Society of Reluctant Dreamers by José Eduardo Agualusa, Daniel Hahn
3.0
3.5 stars, rounded down to 3. I was given a copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.
The book is set largely in Angola, a country I know very little about, so I was interested to read a book set there in the hope of reading and learning a bit about the country and the people there - but this was not the book for that.
It would be unfair to criticise the book in that regard as it doesn't set out to be a book to educate people on the country, but at the same time I felt a bit lost as there were aspects of personality and culture that had a bearing on the story, that were clearly important, but which I didn't really feel like I understood. This still isn't really a criticism though, the author is Angolan and writing, presumably, for an audience who are familiar with Angola, it just might explain some of the disconnect I felt.
The plot of the book relates the story of a journalist, divorced with an adult daughter, and his attempts to make sense of his place in a shifting society, and dealing with his daughter's imprisonment as the result of her revolutionary activities. This plot really just carries on as a sort of backdrop to an examination of dreams and dreamers, which is the main concern of the book.
We have our main character who dreams about a woman, then manages to meet her, his friend about whom people in his vicinity can't help but dream, and a psychologist who has invented a machine that can record, to an extent, people's dreams. Each of these were interesting ideas in themselves, and each of them had an important bearing on the story as well, but I felt like none of them were really dealt with in enough depth, or with enough focus on the consequences, emotional and otherwise, of delving so deeply into people's dreams.
The main character, Daniel, was the only one we really got to know and even then, his motivations remained somewhat mysterious, in that his personality and opinions seemed to change and shift without reason or justification. Moira, Hossi, and Karingiuri, however, never really seemed to become more than one dimensional props in Daniel's story.
Ultimately, the book felt flawed in that none of it was dealt with in enough depth. I didn't feel like I was with Daniel through his journeys or his struggles, I didn't really get to grips with the implications of the examinations of dreaming, and while the ending was satisfying, it lacked some of the catharsis that might otherwise have been achieved if I'd felt more invested.
Partly this was down to the matter of fact way in which everything was told. The book was written like a big list of things that happened, one after the other, told somewhat flatly. It lacked a bit of colour or spark. I've read a few translated books lately which have felt similar and I wonder if it's at least partly a result of the translation, not that it's a bad or flawed translation, just that different languages are constructed differently and are used differently to tell stories.
I have no idea if that's the case, if there is some inherent difference between languages that makes novels fundamentally different, or if the translations I've read of late have been lacklustre, or if the issues I have are just with the source material. In any event, I can only review the book as I read it, and while I enjoyed it well enough, and it kept my interest to the end, it was ultimately unremarkable and a little bland.
The book is set largely in Angola, a country I know very little about, so I was interested to read a book set there in the hope of reading and learning a bit about the country and the people there - but this was not the book for that.
It would be unfair to criticise the book in that regard as it doesn't set out to be a book to educate people on the country, but at the same time I felt a bit lost as there were aspects of personality and culture that had a bearing on the story, that were clearly important, but which I didn't really feel like I understood. This still isn't really a criticism though, the author is Angolan and writing, presumably, for an audience who are familiar with Angola, it just might explain some of the disconnect I felt.
We have our main character who dreams about a woman, then manages to meet her, his friend about whom people in his vicinity can't help but dream, and a psychologist who has invented a machine that can record, to an extent, people's dreams. Each of these were interesting ideas in themselves, and each of them had an important bearing on the story as well, but I felt like none of them were really dealt with in enough depth, or with enough focus on the consequences, emotional and otherwise, of delving so deeply into people's dreams.
The main character, Daniel, was the only one we really got to know and even then, his motivations remained somewhat mysterious, in that his personality and opinions seemed to change and shift without reason or justification. Moira, Hossi, and Karingiuri, however, never really seemed to become more than one dimensional props in Daniel's story.
Ultimately, the book felt flawed in that none of it was dealt with in enough depth. I didn't feel like I was with Daniel through his journeys or his struggles, I didn't really get to grips with the implications of the examinations of dreaming, and while the ending was satisfying, it lacked some of the catharsis that might otherwise have been achieved if I'd felt more invested.
Partly this was down to the matter of fact way in which everything was told. The book was written like a big list of things that happened, one after the other, told somewhat flatly. It lacked a bit of colour or spark. I've read a few translated books lately which have felt similar and I wonder if it's at least partly a result of the translation, not that it's a bad or flawed translation, just that different languages are constructed differently and are used differently to tell stories.
I have no idea if that's the case, if there is some inherent difference between languages that makes novels fundamentally different, or if the translations I've read of late have been lacklustre, or if the issues I have are just with the source material. In any event, I can only review the book as I read it, and while I enjoyed it well enough, and it kept my interest to the end, it was ultimately unremarkable and a little bland.