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A Box of Dreams
| Author: | David Madsen |
| Publisher: |
Dedalus, 2003 |
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| Book Type: | Novel |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
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Synopsis
A Box of Dreams is a surreal extravaganza set in a gothic castle somewhere in snowbound middle-Europe. The young narrator finds himself on a train at night, wearing no trousers, unable to recall who he is or where he is going. On the train he encounters an elderly man who says he is Dr Freud of Vienna (but not the Dr Freud) and a sadistic guard called Malkowitz. At Schloss Flachstein, ancestral home of Count Wilhelm, he finds himself expected to deliver a lecture on yodelling, accidentally starts a stampede of feral cows and becomes infatuated with Adelma, the count's nymphomaniac daughter. Dream opens up onto dream almost ad infinitum as the young man struggles to discover his identity and to separate reality from illusion. Yet all is not what it seems, as the very last page of the book makes clear!
(author)
The young hero awakes to find himself on a train with Dr Freud from Vienna and the sadistic train attendant Malkowitz. He can't remember who he is nor where he is going and has certainly no idea why he is not wearing his trousers. He allows himself to be led off dressed in a lady's skirt on a visit to a nearby castle where it seems he is expected. Everyone is looking forward to his lecture the next day on the art of yodelling. While trying to learn what he can about yodelling in the count's library he encounters Adelma, the count's precocious daughter with an insatiable sexual appetite. He is ready for love but can't get away from the archbishop's wife and is constantly thwarted by the servants desire to let him hear the secrets of their bizarre lives.
Everything is not as it appears as David Madsen leads us through story within story, dream within dream with characters whose reality is constantly changing. We arrive we think back at the beginning ready to begin our journey yet again until the author pulls his final surprise out of his box of tricks.
A baroque black comedy.
(publisher)
The id is out of its box and scampering all over this often hilarious and surreally distrubing gothic romp. The narrator wakes from a dream of sexual assault on a train--or was it' Finding himself in a bewildering Mitteleuropa, he is counselled by a bogus Dr. Freud and embroiled in the irrational doings of a malodorous ticket inspector, a sadistic valet, a lascivious count and his luscious daughter. He is also confined to a velveteen skirt and taken for an authority on yodelling. Madsen has his favorite themes -- food, sex and Catholics -- and here adds psychoanalysis to the mix, as the hero struggles for self-knowledge. He sidles from dream to dream, and wakes to find his consciousness drooling again.
(Amazon)
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