mikerickson reviewed Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
Review of 'Fever Dream' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The best horror media establishes a new irrational fear where you never had one before. Jaws made me afraid of shark attacks on the beach. Psycho made me afraid of getting shanked in a hotel shower. This book made me afraid of sitting on wet grass.
This book is told in the larger context of a long-running real-world environmental disaster in Argentina, but it's never explicitly spelled out in the book, and it stands up on its own without that knowledge (but it does add more to it if you research it after the fact). However the really memorable stuff and what this book does really well is the sense of urgency. The narrator is on her death bed and knows she's running out of time, and the entire book is a single conversation: no chapters, no breaks. There's simply no time to stop and catch your breath because we …
The best horror media establishes a new irrational fear where you never had one before. Jaws made me afraid of shark attacks on the beach. Psycho made me afraid of getting shanked in a hotel shower. This book made me afraid of sitting on wet grass.
This book is told in the larger context of a long-running real-world environmental disaster in Argentina, but it's never explicitly spelled out in the book, and it stands up on its own without that knowledge (but it does add more to it if you research it after the fact). However the really memorable stuff and what this book does really well is the sense of urgency. The narrator is on her death bed and knows she's running out of time, and the entire book is a single conversation: no chapters, no breaks. There's simply no time to stop and catch your breath because we are constantly being reminded that we are running out of time and that there is a specific end point we are trying to reach before she dies. Yes, this is also a short book that I read in one day, but I also didn't want to stop; I was totally pulled in.
This also fits in that, "holy shit I'm glad I don't have kids" subgenre of horror because there's an overlapping theme of motherhood that I could tell would just fuck me up more if I actually had children of my own.
It's definitely a unique horror book in that there's a very subtle and weak supernatural element, but there's also no overt human antagonist. I see a lot of reviews calling this one confusing, but I thought it was pretty clear. It's just that sometimes you do everything you think you're supposed to, but one little thing that you thought nothing of in the moment ends up being a fatal mistake. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not even realizing it until way too late is its own kind of horrifying.
