A Good Book Alert Review (http://www.goodbookalert.blogspot.com/)

The Hambledown Dream
Author: Dean Mayes
Genre: Mainstream with a paranormal elements
Rating: 3.5 Stars

The Hambledown Dream is a meditation upon love, loss, and the true meaning of life.

Summary:

When Australian Denny Banister is tragically cut down in the prime of his life by cancer, he leaves behind a void in the life of his friends and wife.

Across the world in America, Andy DeVries brushes up against death after an overdose. Despite being a talented guitarist attending a prestigious Chicago musical conservatory, he's let himself slip into a dark world of gangsters and drug-dealing. Determined to pull himself out of the gutter, he finds his new strange dreams a guiding light: dreams of a life he's never lived and a woman he's never known.

Review:

There's no greater highlight for life than death. In the opening chapters of The Hambledown Dream, we have the death of one man and the near death of another. The shadows of these experiences haunt the entire novel by providing an important catalyst for the drug dealing self-destructive Andy to change his life path. Although there are some paranormal elements underlying the fundamental motivation for the main character's change, this is really more a novel about a young man trying to set himself on the right path.

Given the bulk of the novel is concentrated on Andy's attempts to extricate himself from his self-inflicted misery, it's important that the author presents him not only as a character with depth but also as someone who is at least somewhat sympathetic. Andy is successfully drawn as a talented young man who has let more base desires slowly drag him into a self-destructive spiral. The presentation of his background and psychology is done well. The author lets us clearly understand how Andy has let a bit of laziness and pleasure seeking lead him to ending up nearly dead in a hospital. In addition, his reactions to the experience and the mysterious dreams of another life come off realistically. The latter, in particular, doesn't dominate the narrative or allow for easy change by Andy. The balance of the plot is on how one man must slowly and carefully work to undo the damage he's inflicted to his own life by his own concerted effort.

Most of the secondary characters all also developed well. Their interactions with Andy and their attempts to parse his behavioral changes provide an interesting alternative perspective to Andy's development.

The secondary characters, however, are associated with one issue that slightly damaged my enjoyment of the novel. There was a tendency to shift point-of-view in a manner that I found slightly disconcerting. The changes did not, in my opinion, always add enough to the novels to offset the disruption caused by these point-of-view shifts.

Of course, when anyone changes, some around them may not appreciate the person they are becoming. These interactions are an effective way of showing how Andy's previous poor choices aren't suddenly irrelevant just because he's trying to change his life trajectory. Ultimately, this provides for more interesting dramatic tension.

I did find Andy's struggles engaging, but I will note the overall tension in the plot wasn't as compelling as it could have been. Although there are some uncertainties and reversals in the course of the story, the lack of serious resistance on Andy's part toward the changes and fundamental questioning of his dreams results in a certain inevitable quality to plot progression.

Lastly, guitar music plays a key role throughout the novel both in adding to atmosphere and as a musical barometer for Andy's personal changes. It can be difficult in a novel format to communicate a musical experience, but the author did an effective job of bringing the reader the various pieces that are played or referenced through the course of the novel.

3.5 Stars