It’s rare for a book to stay so true to its title and create the kind of dizzy horrifying story that hooks you in and promises to never let go. Fever dream does exactly that by telling the story of Amanda, a woman lying in a hospital bed talking to a child named David. The entire book is set in a conversational tone. It is one unbroken conversation that constituted the entire book and yet, the whole story is unveiled piece by piece through it.
As I read this book, I was hooked on the narrative from the first page. There is something quite interesting about seeing things from a person’s point of view but not by the stuff they think but by the stuff they say.
Throughout the novel, it is hard to place one theme in it. It started as a mystery thriller and gives off a horror-ish feeling at times, but as I got lost in the characters and when the story started unfolding and finally making sense, I understood what it was all about. With pesticides as a theme, it showed two major things- the paranoia of a mother and the chilling unsafe atmosphere.
When the book ended, I had so many thoughts running around in my head which I have lost in the way of writing this review. But if I am to add my point of view to it, I wonder if the whole novel is the seven-second flashback of the protagonist’s life (mainly the important events) as she battles death.
We hear an inside voice in her head, telling her which details are important and which are not, and those focus mainly on unimportant flashes or images which makes me believe in my theory a little more.
There are very few actual dialogues in the book and mainly just thoughts and details about images that one sees in flashes and feverish delirium. This is her, retracing her steps back to all the things that led to the event of her death (this also explains the rescue distance thing, keeping track and measure about everything), and as such, this was the most interesting narrative I have read.
Even the quote “If you focus, things happen faster. Then they’ll also end faster.” kind of supports the argument because if she focuses, she’ll realise that she isn’t alive anymore and that would be the end.
Now, most people wouldn’t agree with this theory because it is a far stretch, but a book is how it is interpreted and my way of interpretation makes it interesting to me.
