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A review by the_discworldian
The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr
5.0
I found this book on the dollar shelf at a local used bookstore. I don't even remember why I picked it up. I needed something to read for a trip, and it was a dollar, and the premise sounded intriguing (I like Old Hollywood stuff if it's done well) and when I read a test page I thought the writing was pretty good.
I didn't even bring it on that trip, but I'm so glad I picked it up last weekend. That was officially the best dollar I've ever spent.
I LOVED THIS BOOK. I don't even know how to describe how much I loved it. It fully occupied my brain while reading it and it's still bouncing around in there while I digest a few twists and turns. When I put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. I read the first 50 pages on a train packed with tourists, and hardly noticed. It absorbed me from the first.
A good deal of this had to do with the narrator. On the cover of my book, someone compared the narrative voice to "Remains of the Day," which I haven't read. What Jun's narration reminded me of was Iris of Margaret Atwood's "The Blind Assassin," a self-deceiving, self-important elderly figure looking back on the past. However, contrary to Iris, I was always 100% with Jun. I wanted to get to the secrets, of course, but I almost wanted him to hang on to his delusions. I liked him so much. But once we got through all of the revelations, I still liked him. This book was so satisfying, start to finish. And, gosh - heart-warming. Heart-warming without being cheesy. I could tell that the author had a lot of affection and sympathy for her characters, as imperfect as they were. She managed, too, to create one really good person, Hanako Minatoya, and make her one of those rare all-around-good characters who doesn't make the reader want to gag.
There were a couple of flattish characters, but because the whole book was from Jun's perspective, I could forgive it. The contemporary ones (solely from the 1964 end of things, not his colleagues who appeared at both ends of time) were, with one important exception (), a little one-dimensional. But I believed that was mostly because of what Jun was choosing to tell us. Pretty much everything to do with the character Nora was (deliberately, I believe) squirm-worthy: Jun may describe her as having gone insane since the pivotal murder, but if Nora Minton Niles was ever sane in any part of the book, I am the ghost of Errol Flynn.
When I was in college, one of my English major friends told me that if I was ever stuck for a good bullshit phrase when analyzing literature, I should use "the human condition." "Just say it's reflective of the human condition," he said. I don't think I ever resorted to that, or wanted to (although I thought it was pretty funny). But wouldn't you know that's kind of what I want to say now, no bullshit? Jun is so incredibly human: the way we like to present ourselves (to self and others) as inherently dignified and rational, but a certain amount of reflection and revelation will always unveil the petty, self-indulgent, mistaken and occasionally catastrophic choices we've made and will make. But for Jun, and all of us, this book seems to say, it's never too late to redeem those choices.
I didn't even bring it on that trip, but I'm so glad I picked it up last weekend. That was officially the best dollar I've ever spent.
I LOVED THIS BOOK. I don't even know how to describe how much I loved it. It fully occupied my brain while reading it and it's still bouncing around in there while I digest a few twists and turns. When I put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. I read the first 50 pages on a train packed with tourists, and hardly noticed. It absorbed me from the first.
A good deal of this had to do with the narrator. On the cover of my book, someone compared the narrative voice to "Remains of the Day," which I haven't read. What Jun's narration reminded me of was Iris of Margaret Atwood's "The Blind Assassin," a self-deceiving, self-important elderly figure looking back on the past. However, contrary to Iris, I was always 100% with Jun. I wanted to get to the secrets, of course, but I almost wanted him to hang on to his delusions. I liked him so much. But once we got through all of the revelations, I still liked him. This book was so satisfying, start to finish. And, gosh - heart-warming. Heart-warming without being cheesy. I could tell that the author had a lot of affection and sympathy for her characters, as imperfect as they were. She managed, too, to create one really good person, Hanako Minatoya, and make her one of those rare all-around-good characters who doesn't make the reader want to gag.
There were a couple of flattish characters, but because the whole book was from Jun's perspective, I could forgive it. The contemporary ones (solely from the 1964 end of things, not his colleagues who appeared at both ends of time) were, with one important exception (
Spoiler
CharlieWhen I was in college, one of my English major friends told me that if I was ever stuck for a good bullshit phrase when analyzing literature, I should use "the human condition." "Just say it's reflective of the human condition," he said. I don't think I ever resorted to that, or wanted to (although I thought it was pretty funny). But wouldn't you know that's kind of what I want to say now, no bullshit? Jun is so incredibly human: the way we like to present ourselves (to self and others) as inherently dignified and rational, but a certain amount of reflection and revelation will always unveil the petty, self-indulgent, mistaken and occasionally catastrophic choices we've made and will make. But for Jun, and all of us, this book seems to say, it's never too late to redeem those choices.