Reality and Dreams

Rating:
Summary: "I'm like a drowning man sometimes."
Review: "Reality and Dreams" is the story of Tom Richards--a very successful film director in his early 60s--who suffers a serious fall while working on the set of his latest film. After a long hospital stay, Tom returns home accompanied by an army of nurses. From his bed, Tom staves off ambitious actresses, discontent and unemployed in-laws, and the film backers who try to replace him. Tom is nursed by his disassociated, disaffected wife, Claire--a wealthy woman who chooses to accept her husband's affairs by having a few of her own. Tom's two daughters compete for attention--there is the beautiful but empty Cora and the sullen, disgruntled Marigold. Meanwhile Rose Woodstock (Tom's leading actress and mistress) vies for attention and shoves a lesser actress aside. Tom's film "The Hamburger Girl" is based on one of Tom's brief memories, and it undergoes a number of title changes as the book progresses.

"Reality and Dreams" was a light, amusing, easy read, and while I enjoyed it, it lacked substance. One of the most amusing parts was Tom's regret that various dead writers and poets (such as Graham Greene, Auden, and Louis MacNiece) cannot visit him as he convalesces. Tom seems to register that an era that produced great writers is over, but that doesn't stop him from creating his next pompous and ludicrous film, "Watling Street." The characters in "Reality and Dreams" were well drawn, but the story was really not developed, and ultimately the conclusion was a little unsatisfying. The premise of the book reminded me very much of a Woody Allen film, and I kept imagining Woody Allen in the role of Tom. The book was a cross between "Celebrity" meets "Hollywood Ending" with all the characters playing musical beds. "Reality and Dreams" is not Muriel Spark's best work--still well written--but rather sketchy and insubstantial--displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: Fiction as it Should Be Written
Review: The most astonishing thing about Muriel Spark (other than how good she is at what she does) is that she does it so sparingly--she never wastes a word. This novel is no exception. As usual, artistry and creation are central themes, but for Spark they are natural themes, and connected to a startling and authoritative view of reality as an artwork, of God as the truly capable artist and artificer. Spark's characters are always deliciously alive, often malicious, always charming or repulsive as need be; Tom is one of Spark's best male characters--appearing in a role often reserved for a possibly autobiographical female character. Read this book, and then hunt down the rest of Muriel Spark's work and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Run, Don't Walk, to Get This!
Review: This book was an unexpected surprise. I'd read Spark's earliest novels years ago, had only the vague memory that they were enjoyable and well-written. REALITY AND DREAMS is a reminder that Spark is far better than just good. In just 160 pages, she carries off a miracle of imagery, plot twists and character development that swirl about the title's themes and the difficulty that mortals, particularly those engaged in artistic, especially cinematic pursuits, have in distinguishing between the two or understanding how one can beget another. Spark wittily populates her book with a lively, bright ensemble of contemporary British characters whose lives are in one way or another connected with protagonist Tom Richards, a successful movie director. Like most of the characters, he is flawed, but also like most of the characters, there is tension yet some fun in watching him. Appropriate to the theme, Spark creates two films for him to conceive and execute, and such is the power of her vision, they felt real enough that I wanted to see them. She grounds that glamour, however, against the backdrop of contemporary economic realities--redundancy, the British term for unemployment, down-sizing and such becomes a major image and theme as well. Spark's voice is so very truthful throughout, that it is yet another layer of commentary on the relationship between reality and dreams. She can take a bell-clear image, scene or piece of dialogue and make it dense with multiple meaning. Wow! I was very sorry when the book was over.