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These Dreams of You

3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 · rating details · 255 ratings · 57 reviews

One November night in a canyon outside L.A., Zan Nordhoc-a failed novelist turned pirate radio DJ-sits before the television with his small, adopted black daughter, watching the election of his country's first black president. In the nova of this historic moment, with an economic recession threatening their home, Zan, his wife and their son set out to solve the enigma of t...more

Paperback, 309 pages

Published 2012 by Europa Editions

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Jul 02, 2012 oriana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2012

post-read: Ooh boy, Steve Erickson is so superb. This was really different than I expected (read: really different from Zeroville ); it was hyper-realistic, not at all stylized, with really normal, messy characters grappling with kind of huge issues—race, adoption, debt, historical precedent, what it means to be American, stuff like that. But then it was also somehow in pieces and a little bit twistily meta—our main character is also a writer, who is kind of writing a story that has things that...more post-read: Ooh boy, Steve Erickson is so superb. This was really different than I expected (read: really different from Zeroville ); it was hyper-realistic, not at all stylized, with really normal, messy characters grappling with kind of huge issues—race, adoption, debt, historical precedent, what it means to be American, stuff like that. But then it was also somehow in pieces and a little bit twistily meta—our main character is also a writer, who is kind of writing a story that has things that kind of also happen in this story, but to different characters, kind of; it's hard to explain. But it's very twisty, and very subtle, cycling and cycling back on itself in a weirdly brilliant and kind of harrowing way.

The one thing he did do which was just like I remembered from Zeroville was have characters who were real people from history or pop culture, but never actually say who they were, just drop a lot of clues like dates and hair color and sometimes quotes. I guess this is cool, but as someone who was raised by hippies with no TV, I am almost wholly without pop-culture knowledge, so it's just frustrating to know that I really ought to know who these people are but I just don't. I guess Wikipedia could have told me if I tried hard enough, but I never did.

Anyway, I loved this. About 4/5 of the way in, it occurred to me that it was well within Erickson's power to very seriously fuck up all of the characters—and, by extension, me—which would have made me extremely upset. It's not much of a spoiler to say that he didn't, not really, for which I am terribly grateful; grateful enough to read another of his books as soon as I can.

pre-read: Europa was kind enough to have a pre-BEA breakfast last week, kind enough to invite me because I've done a fair bit of proofreading for them, and kind enough to send me off with this, among several other very awesome books.

I love this already because 1) It was free, 2) I loveloveloveloved Zeroville, although oddly I haven't made any attempt to read more Erickson since, and 3) The title is (I assume) from Van Morrison, whom I also adore, and so I've decided that while I read this I'll listen to Van Morrison the whole time, which is lovely.

I will tell you this, though: I really wish Europa had asked me to proofread this one, because it's kind of a mess.(less)

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Apr 05, 2012 tim rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: agnostic patriots

It’s a rhythm and blues from the future that’s spiraled round the sphere of time to come back up through its birth canal.

Before I could react, a hood thrown over my head, my person shoved from behind into a waiting ghost van peeling a smokescreen so thick no two witnesses report seeing the same thing. Coming to, dazed on the cusp of a deep canyon near an abandoned bridge spanning a thin blue thread nestled below, the only thought I can muster to wonder aloud: all this from reading a book?

Standin...more

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May 06, 2012 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5-star-books, read-in-2012

This review initially ran in the New York Journal of Books website. I reproduce it here:

“Here are we, one magical moment
Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven.”
—David Bowie

On a Tuesday evening in November 2008, Alexander “Zan” Nordhoc sits in a rocking chair with his adopted Ethiopian daughter Sheba, watching his country elect its first black president. On the television, thousands of people celebrate in the same Chicago park where 40 years before thousands of people rioted.

In Los Angeles...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-fiction, america, cultural-and-social-commentary, four-star-fiction, just-plain-bizarre

What do Bobby Kennedy, David Bowie, James Joyce's Molly Bloom, President Obama, and MatthewMarkLuke&John have in common? Outside of this book, probably not much.
If you had an acid-head friend with attention deficit who was also a gifted raconteur, his stories might come to you in this sort of fever-dream fashion. A little time travel, a few riffs and rants on politics, plagiarism, coincidence, race, religion, literature. A little incoherent rambling. And every once in awhile a shining jewel...more What do Bobby Kennedy, David Bowie, James Joyce's Molly Bloom, President Obama, and MatthewMarkLuke&John have in common? Outside of this book, probably not much.
If you had an acid-head friend with attention deficit who was also a gifted raconteur, his stories might come to you in this sort of fever-dream fashion. A little time travel, a few riffs and rants on politics, plagiarism, coincidence, race, religion, literature. A little incoherent rambling. And every once in awhile a shining jewel of truth.

2008. A white American family has adopted Sheba, an Ethiopian girl who is now four years old. Oh, and her body also happens to be a radio transmitter. Got that? So one day Viv, her turquoise-haired adoptive mom, ups and decides she's gotta go to Addis Ababa and find Sheba's biological mother. Meanwhile Zan, her adoptive father, is off to London with his 12-year-old son Parker.
From here on out, it's anybody's guess where things will go. 1968. 1921. 1989. Berlin. Los Angeles. Paris. Nonlinear, present tense, by turns nonsensical and brilliant, occasionally hilarious. I should have hated this book, but I found it irritatingly irresistible.

There are some similarities to Nicholas Christopher's A Trip to the Stars and Frederick Reiken's Day for Night in the way Erickson plays with degrees of separation, mystical connections, and the illusory nature of time and space.

I had to consider the book in its entirety before I could see that it is Steve Erickson's love song to America, absent of all mawkishness or jingoism. We bicker and blame, canonize and then cannibalize our leaders, destroy our economy with impatience and greed. And yet, the America we've got is better than not.
Erickson says it best in this passage from page 301:

"It's a country that does things in lurches, but when the high altitude of the great leap -- of either faith or imagination, assuming one exists without the other -- has given way to the next morning's bends, the country peers around and wonders where it landed. Be that as it may, Zan can't relinquish his memory of the melody, can't bring himself to be unhaunted by it. There's no other song he believes in more or nearly as much. By the din of circumstance or the roar of other voices or some combination of them, in the void no one else sings anything else as true or worth singing. Zan's country always has belonged to the rest of the world's imagination more than its own, and sitting here in an airport three thousand miles away, he still hears the song around him, from London to the ruins of the Berlin barricade once built in a futile attempt to keep the song out."(less)

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Feb 26, 2012 Jon rated it 5 of 5 stars

A typical family novel These Dreams of You is Not. It's more like a turbocharged, falling apart, break down, can-the-family-get-back-together-again kind of story. Or looking at it from another angle: can America get back together again?

My favorite quote:

"This is the occupational hazard of being of my country, the way one's identity becomes bound up with a landscape that manifests in its soil and psychitecture an idea, with a people still fighting over who they are because when nothing else is he...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Mike Schwartz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Erickson writes postmodern, genre-spanning novels influenced by pop culture and literary heroes like Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo and J.G. Ballard. His recent novels seem to bear more relation to mix tapes than anything else, and These Dreams of You is no exception, with music playing an especially important role. In addition to the title quote from a Van Morrison song, Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come plays an important role and David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Reg Presley (from the Troggs) show up...more Erickson writes postmodern, genre-spanning novels influenced by pop culture and literary heroes like Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo and J.G. Ballard. His recent novels seem to bear more relation to mix tapes than anything else, and These Dreams of You is no exception, with music playing an especially important role. In addition to the title quote from a Van Morrison song, Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come plays an important role and David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Reg Presley (from the Troggs) show up in bit pats. Dreams, like Erickson’s last book, Zeroville, is entirely made up of short mini-chapters featuring vignettes that add layers to the story and create a dream-like atmosphere. While Zeroville was focused on a movie-obsessed sociopath, Dreams focuses on a music-obsessed college professor and his family (Zan and Viv), who begin the novel on the eve of the historic election of our country’s first black president while facing financial ruin and home foreclosure; a moment of combined optimism and pessimism. Zan and Viv have an adopted Ethiopian child who is preternaturally intelligent and who forces them to grapple with how a white couple can raise an African child to be aware of both her identifies. They travel from LA to London to Paris to Berlin and on to Addis Ababba in order to learn about their child’s parents and to save their family in the bargain. Zan ends up on the trail of a woman, possibly a ghost, possibly his daughter’s birth mother, while Viv tries to find out what happened to the girl’s family after she may have inadvertently contributed to their ruin. The novel features multiple cameos of real historical figures, a time travel subplot, and some vaguely supernatural elements, all of which allow Erickson to tackle larger questions of American racial identity, the ethics of adoption, with side forays into art plagiarism (a veiled reference to actual art plagiarism perpetrated by Damien Hirst on Erickson’s wife, Lori Precious, just the latest in Hirst’s “borrowings”,), white guilt, and raising a family in 21st century America. All in all an exciting experiment, that speaks directly to our current American moment.(less)

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Aug 08, 2012 Corey Pung rated it 5 of 5 stars

Roughly 70 pages into the novel These Dreams of You by Steve Erickson I was ready to boldly proclaim it the best book of 2012. It had much of what I so frequently look for in a novel–believable characters, social commentary, a suspenseful plot, and touches of avant-gard aesthetics that don’t bog down the whole. By the end of the book, I wasn’t so sure it was still the best of the year–due in part to occasional middling portions, but also due to the upcoming releases by Martin Amis, Michael Chabo...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Thorn MotherIssues rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adoption-reading-challenge, read-2012

This is an innovative, experimental novel and I gave myself over to the form completely but I'm still a little unsure about the content. I may well reread and up my number to a five, but it took me so long ot get into it and it was so hard to attach to any character that I'm not sure.... I definitely understand why so many readers are frustrated by present-tense narration these days.

As far as adoption content, the main character, Zan, a frustrated maybe-ex-novelist, and his underemployed artist...more This is an innovative, experimental novel and I gave myself over to the form completely but I'm still a little unsure about the content. I may well reread and up my number to a five, but it took me so long ot get into it and it was so hard to attach to any character that I'm not sure.... I definitely understand why so many readers are frustrated by present-tense narration these days.

As far as adoption content, the main character, Zan, a frustrated maybe-ex-novelist, and his underemployed artist/photographer wife Viv have adopted a precocious four-year-old from Ethiopia they call Sheba (though as in reality, no one ever mentions that a lot of those precocious Ethiopian adoptees have had their ages lowered significantly when their paperwork was written) and a 12-year-old bio son, Parker. Obama has just been elected and they're in the process of having the bank foreclose on their home. Although they call Sheba an orphan, they know that at least her family is alive and were able to meet her father and the paternal grandmother who'd been raising her. Now Viv feels obsessed with the idea of finding Sheba's mother, which eventually happens in a way that requires some magic or divine intervention. When Zan gets a chance to lecture overseas, Viv leaves the kids with him to head to Addis Ababa to try ot find some answers. Passing through LA, Ethiopia, London, Paris, Berlin, not to mention fiction and fictionalized history, there's a story made about where Sheba comes from biologically that still doesn't get passed on to her exactly. The narrative style keeps everyone's inner life mostly unexplained, but Sheba's most of all. Even in her dreams, I was struck by how different she was from the four-year-old adoptee living in my own home, who doesn't feel things resolve to one family or one story. But that's my bias, and maybe it's one of the things that kept me wanting to shake Zan and Viv and get their kids some help. This is far from a parenting how-to story but it's interesting in terms of watching how a transracial adoptive father (like the author) makes a story that makes sense of transracial adoption and, as a bonus, race relations through the last half of the twentieth century and into the current time.(less)

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Feb 12, 2013 Peter Van rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

I have always been a big fan of Steve Erickson's writing but I find his latest book underwhelming to say the least. As always with Erickson this is an easy read, taking you along at high speed through the pages. But the content of the writing is less rewarding to me than in his previous novels. Where his prose used to be delightfully weird and forceful, in this novel at times it is downright mushy ("and there against the light of the outer hall are two silhouettes that need no light other than t...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

frustrating! the writing is often gorgeous, the plot is swirling and complex, and the book... largely annoying. on paper everything seems like it should be right down my alley, enough so that i keep returning despite continuing frustration. here are the problems i've had with erickson here and before - he builds small novels out of big stories, where everything winds together too close, too narrow; he draws in history and historical characters but the never feel more than a little bit human; his...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Tessa added it

Shelves: fictive, speculative

Steve Erickson is the reason I wanted to go to Kansas. He's the only reason I'd like to visit L.A. He's part of the reason I want to visit Berlin, and now he has made me want to go to Addis Ababa. But only if those places are the alternate versions that appear in his novels (yes, with violent muggings and all).

For me, there's the canon of Erickson that is pre-me-knowing-it-existed, and then there's the post-me-knowing-he-existed publications. I feel like the latter are more grounded in real wor...more

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Mar 05, 2012 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: europa-editions

I had just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog when I saw Steve Erickson’s Zeroville on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. I took a chance on the novel, on the Europa logo alone. It has been a few years, but I remember enjoying Zeroville except for the fact that my knowledge of early cinema and Hollywood stars was slightly less than up to par. With that as background, I approached “These Dreams of You” cautiously, hoping that the author gave me a few more recognizable signposts and that he managed...more I had just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog when I saw Steve Erickson’s Zeroville on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. I took a chance on the novel, on the Europa logo alone. It has been a few years, but I remember enjoying Zeroville except for the fact that my knowledge of early cinema and Hollywood stars was slightly less than up to par. With that as background, I approached “These Dreams of You” cautiously, hoping that the author gave me a few more recognizable signposts and that he managed to tackle issues of race and identity without the schmaltz so often associated with such issues by white authors.

For fans of James McBride’s The Color of Water, These Dreams of You will be a welcome read. I thoroughly enjoyed this truly surprising novel, from its story to its message, its characters all the way to the author’s unique writing style. Erickson’s work as a film critic for the LA Times must carry through to his novelistic endeavors—there are not chapters so much as vignettes of varying length. Some are a paragraph and some are much longer. One might think that this could create a lack of focus for the reader or issues with the pacing. One would be wrong. Like in Zeroville, Erickson weaves actual history into his novels. Bobby Kennedy and David Bowie figure heavily into this story. One might think that would come across as gimmicky. One would be wrong.

Admittedly, there were sections I read through with what I am sure was a mildly perplexed look on my face. The best way to describe it would be to say that when the plot took a turn I didn’t see it was the kind of frustrating that made me want to read on, not to put the book down. By the end, I was impressed with Erickson’s ability to merge his narratives and shift away from plot and towards philosophy. More important were his moving thoughts on the state of racial identity, conflict and the very core of our country. In a manner I have rarely seen among white men discussing race, Erickson quietly questions what any of us can do to erase or balance the scales against decades and centuries of abuse and discrimination without coming across as pious, pandering or hopeless.

“This is the problem, he reasons, with presidents who can’t be as big as the reasons they embody. A body can only hold reasons so big. Should the silencing of the song come to pass, not only will Zan be complicit in the loss of his own faith, he will be complicit for having faith in the first place. But without such faith, the country—this country in particular—is nothing. This is the occupational hazard of being my country, the way one’s identity manifests in its soil and psychitecture an idea, with a people still fighting over who they are because when nothing else is held in common but the idea then if the idea isn’t held in coming there’s nothing left except the mystical name of the place that evokes something different for each person but which each person allows himself or herself to believe is the thing evoked for every other person.” –p. 264

I won’t spoil the plot in detail for anyone, suffice to say that a family of 4 with an adopted Ethiopian daughter undertakes a journey to find the girl’s biological mother that literally changes their lives forever. The climate of our country’s politics and beliefs almost warrant this book being required reading for all adults with a desire to engage more honestly and more fully with their neighbors and their nation. If it does not make you think, you might not be in tune.(less)

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Jul 21, 2012 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: library

I picked this up from one of the "New Books" stands at the public library and borrowed it on the strength of the blurb from Pynchon on the back and in spite of the American flag on the cover. Erickson writes the whole novel in a series of paragraph-bursts, much shorter than chapters, which seemed to be a clever way of trying to make the sometimes dense and difficult more palatable and engaging. The story is told in a sort of circular and self-referential way that was enjoyable and not pretentiou...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Lam rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this off the library shelf because of its cover, and as soon as I started reading, I was hooked. I'd never heard of the author, but then I discovered via goodreads that he has a devoted following. And I can see why. The writing is lyrical and intense. The plotting is intricate. The style unique. The parents of a 12-year-old boy adopt a girl from Ethiopia. As the family slides into financial ruin, the mother becomes obsessed with finding the girl's birth mother. So off she goes to Addis...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Deborah rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book's premise is indeed suspenseful, but the execution is not particularly successful. I skipped ahead in order to find out what happened after the main character, Zan, leaves his four-year-old daughter who goes missing in London with her mysterious nanny, in order to track down his wife Viv, who's absconded to Ethiopia to search for the daughter's birth mother. Viv and Zan's 12-year-old son finds a photo online of Viv in front of a Berlin landmark, so Zan and his son inexplicably go to Ge...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars

A wonderful book! A family of three living in LA adopts a girl of 2 years from Ethiopia. The wife wants to find the birth mother and returns to Ethiopia to find her. Her husband and son go to London where the father has a speaking engagement, to wait for the wife. That's what is behind this web of a novel of repeating actions from the past and present. There's an amazing part about RFKs run for the president and his assassination, a repetition of his brother's earlier murder. And MLK's murder mo...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I gave this book four stars as it was very, very well-written and extremely clever, especially the metacommentary that weaves through the book, and the book within the book. I enjoyed the way the author's characters affected both the personalities of the novelist as a character's creations and how that in turn seamlessly changed the arc of the story line. The book is like a political love letter to America. However, the very last line of the book was just too neat for me, as if the author prepla...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Alice Meloy rated it 3 of 5 stars

For most of this book I alternated between awed admiration for the
author's skill with words and a desire to pick up his main character
by the collar and shake him. Zan Nordhoc, a "former" novelist and his
wife Viv have adopted a young girl from Ethiopia. While they sink
deeper and deeper into debt and closer and closer to having their home
foreclosed on, Viv becomes obsessed with trying to find out something
about the little girl's birth mother. This prompts a poorly planned
trip to Ethiopia for Viv,...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Msladydeborah rated it 2 of 5 stars

These Dreams of You might be receiving high marks for the writing style of author Steve Erickson but I found this particular book to be annoying at different times because it was difficult to determine which one of the characters that particular segment of the story was attached to.

It is an unusual story and it is raw energy and emotion throughout the story. I think that Erickson raises some interesting points regarding America's cultural and political attitudes within the story. I will have to...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Marla Glenn rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have never encountered a novel like this one. The story is told smoothly and seamlessly even though the short paragraphs are broken up by large amounts of white space. I don't even notice the segues between subjects because of the brevity of the writing.

I ended up having to skim through the second half of this book because the sci-fi aspects, which I was not expecting, became so unnerving. I'm sure it's wonderful for readers who relate to this genre, but I simply found it too unsettling with...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars

[Disclaimer: I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway.]

Wow. Just wow. I seriously want to pick up more of Mr. Erickson's works now. Are they all this intriguing? There were times I had to stop, reread a passage, and savor it before continuing. It was some of the best fiction I've read in some time.

The formatting of this novel threw me off at first. There are no defined chapters. It's very stream-of-consciousness. You would think this would make it easier to find a stopping point if you have...more [Disclaimer: I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway.]

Wow. Just wow. I seriously want to pick up more of Mr. Erickson's works now. Are they all this intriguing? There were times I had to stop, reread a passage, and savor it before continuing. It was some of the best fiction I've read in some time.

The formatting of this novel threw me off at first. There are no defined chapters. It's very stream-of-consciousness. You would think this would make it easier to find a stopping point if you have to put the book down, but it was quite the opposite! After chewing through this one in a mere three sittings (that may be a record for me), I find myself balking at the idea of going back to a traditionally-laid out book. Chalk it up as one more selling point for this author/publisher.

To the meat of the book: The racial card is an easy one to trigger emotions, but Erickson reexamines the perceptions of race and nationality and discovery of self from multiple points of view and points in time. It's evocative. It's visceral. You can damn near HEAR the musical descriptors. And the way he spins a public figure into the tale, only offering clues to be picked up via context, is nothing short of masterful.

Anyone looking for a political message in this will find one. (Really, that's just the way of it if you're already predisposed to dislike something.) But if you're picking it up to enjoy a good read, chances are - regardless of your personal slant - that you'll walk away being charmed by some awesome storytelling with a flavor of outsider reporting (think: BBC).

The overall story is wrapped in a layer of "real" problems, which makes it palatable to the everyday reader (and nerve-wracking for me) all at once. And you know what? The fact that there are still a few loose ends, aka "mysteries" - as opposed to "secrets" - at the end doesn't bother me. I don't have to make up endings or give certain characters that "happily ever after". Granted, this starts out with characters looking for closure, but in the end, the most important objective is met and the rest is enveloped in profound prose.

Good on you, sir. This is one that will not be joining the giveaway stack.(less)

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Sep 05, 2012 Charles Cohen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-lit

Each of Steve Erickson's books is a dream. Not as in "wonderful, riding unicorns on rainbows superfun enjoyment" (although they also fit that description sometimes, too), but as in they contain their own inner logic, and shift perspectives and settings so smoothly you constantly have to adjust your bearings. "Wait, what year is it now? And who's speaking? Is that her mother?" The first time I read one of his books I got caught up in it. Now, I just try to keep up with the flow. And These Dreams...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Eraserhead rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ugh. Another Erickson novel that begins brilliantly, moves fluidly, has that great page-turning suspense, and then falls apart in the end amid a slew of lame 'trippy coincidences' that we all saw coming a mile away, a weak conclusion, and lame cosmic platitudes. The last 1/4 of the book drags it down from a solid 4/5 into 3/5, in the same damn way as Arc D'X, and with some of the exact lame platitudes, as if Erickson becomes afraid at the end of his books that his reader could not follow his fai...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Filled with historical allusions and some beautiful passages, this book is a stream of consciousness that feels very present with our society today. I came to appreciate the text more after getting to discuss it with some friends, and would now consider it a solid piece of American prose. Read it if you have an interest in precocious children, politics, David Bowie, travel, and a high-speed car chase. Yup, it's everywhere...

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Dec 03, 2012 Jimmie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is going directly onto my to-be-read-again-as-soon-as-I-can-find-the-time queue. I enjoyed it tremendously (especially once the out-of-left-field Robert Kennedy/David Bowie/Iggy Pop subplots started to make sense), but I ruptured a disc in my back about halfway through the reading of this book, so I read the rest of it in febrile sessions at 4 am trying desperately to pretend I wasn't in a ton of pain and silently praying for a god I never believed in to just fuckin' take me now.

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Sep 08, 2012 Laurel rated it 4 of 5 stars

These Dreams of You is the first Steve Erickson book I have read. I am not sure I have ever read a book quite like this. Is it crazy, political, a screed, or just unusual (in the very best way). The feeling of the late 1960's in California canyons, to losing houses, crazy travels to London, Berlin and Ethiopia and the first black president has just been elected. Looking forward to reading Zeroville

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Mar 21, 2013 Maureen Murphy rated it 1 of 5 stars

I found this book annoying, with forced edges that were dull, adding RFK and everyone meeting everyone in a giant manufactured wacky spider web of chance. So many parts felt forced and others just overdone. The historical and present day people were shown in shallow perspectives that belittled them. I do not recommend it.

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Sep 23, 2012 Heathermarvell rated it 5 of 5 stars

I thought this was incredibly evocative of the complex emotions inherent in the nuclear family, as well as the more specific experiences of the recent economic downturn on those in the previously-secure middle class. There were a lot of ridiculous coincidences, but, somehow, they all seemed to work.

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Jul 30, 2012 Bob rated it 3 of 5 stars

I agree with those who think the book is well written but frustrating. Frustrating because the characters, though often human, are also often symbols and metaphors for the diverse and crazy political and cultural ship that is the United States. All of that ought to work, but somehow it doesn't work for me.

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May 15, 2012 Patti rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was really disappointed in this.
It started out well, and, in general, I love Erickson's style. I especially find his weaving of history-as-we-know-it and "possible history" really engaging.
But the more he wrote this time, the more bombastic and arcane his prose grew and it was torment to finish it.

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12331736-these-dreams-of-you?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1326770235l/12331736.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12331736-these-dreams-of-you?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]These Dreams of You by Steve Erickson[/url]

These Dreams of You

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