The Dream of a Beast

by Neil Jordan

Nightmares mingle with reality in the story of a man whose animal instincts lead him to an affair carried out at the zoo and his bestial subconscious, which can no longer tolerate the safe cage of suburbia

Genres: Fiction, Irish Literature

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Neil Jordan is an Irish novelist and film director.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

A man's body rebels, and dreams itself into something monstrous; his world becomes as alien to him as he has become to the world. Jordan writes some beautiful poetry in the form of prose and so The Dream of a Beast is filled with astonishingly surreal imagery. This deeply experimental novel - if it can even be called that - describes a man's search for connection and transcendence from the inside out, from a purely emotional-mental space, where metaphor is reality... and so the entire story is a 103-page dreamscape. Unfortunately for me, I, like many, have to be in the right mood to listen to someone's extensive recounting of their dreams; and so this book was best read in 25-page increments. Despite my detachment from it, on a chapter-by-chapter or even paragraph-by-paragraph basis, the writing is stunning and layered with meaning. Ironically, for a work that is overflowing with beautifully constructed sentences, the first person narrator struggles continually to say what he thinks, and even to speak his thoughts aloud. Although it is essentially about transformation and coming to terms with yourself, that leitmotif of communication breaking down was particularly well-articulated (*chuckle*). I especially enjoyed the sequence where a conversation is portrayed as a series of strange sounds, with a buzzing insect noise coming from the most bothersome of the participants. And the early realization that the connection that the narrator longs for most is with his wife and child made the story surprisingly emotionally grounded, despite its disconnection from any known reality.



And hey, a happy ending, of all things!

☾

Neil Jordan is mainly known as a director, in particular for The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire. He directed one of my teen years' favorite films: his adaptation of Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves, where his focus was less on that story's exploration of gender in fairy tales and was more about his own fascination with identity and transformation - apparently a hallmark of all of his works. Featuring Angela Lansbury as a formidable Granny and, of course, dreamscapes galore.

[Cecily · Rating 1 out of 5]

A short novella, told like a story, but its increasing surreality makes it increasingly like a very long dream, which confused me at first as I didn't know it was that sort of book. I expect its fans think it very profound, but it said nothing to me.

It is the sort of pretentious and poorly written thing I might have produced in my late teens, and whilst I might have been proud of it at the time, I would be relieved as an adult if it had never been published.

Even ignoring the absence of speech marks (which I find annoying, but concede is a valid stylistic trait), I still think the writing is bad. There are too many self-conscious mentions of light, railway tracks and mist that are ultimately empty.

It tries too hard to be "poetic", which leads to bizarre metaphors such as, "the almond green of her eyes" (though later he is more conventional and describes his own eyes as almond-shaped) and "the scent, which seemed to hang in the air like figures of eight". After lines like that, I couldn't decide whether "I touched my finger off the sundial" was a typo or deliberate, and if deliberate, what it was meant to mean.

At other times, it could do with a little more variety. He hears the "hissing of sprinklers" twice in the space of only 3 sparsely worded pages. However, as the same word is used for sprinklers on several other occasions, it's obviously deliberate, but it jarred with me.

As for the small amount of sex, it should surely be considered for the annual literary Bad Sex award.

Overall, the only person I would recommend this to would be a budding author wanting a case study of what not to do.

[Brian Chin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite it being a really short 128 page book, I read it in broken fragments over the course of two-three months, which I realize is a horrible way to read a book. I admit I was lost as to what was going on the story, but what compelled to read on was the strong imagery. I enjoyed the novel just for that =3; kind of reminded me of Miyazaki's "Spirited Away".

[Ju Ribeiro · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't get it, not my type of reading.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Load of oul shit.

[Eleni · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just honestly not a great book.
It was super wanky and hard to understand visually and I just kept getting lost with every new weird attempt at a dream like state.
Also within the first 10 pages of the book he writes the words "She opened her vagina" and from there I just started skimming and honestly felt like I didn't miss much.
At first I thought it was maybe some sort of post apocalyptic world or something? I feel like it would've been so much more interesting that way and it felt sort of set up for that. With the train not usually coming and people giving him wide berths and weird looks. But then it all just got muddled and confused and I think Jordan was just trying too hard to be artistic and different and it just was not working for me lol.
I honestly suffered through this book till the end and only didn't DNF because it was a short book and I wanted to try give it a fair go but honestly I shouldn't have bothered.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Um...no. No more. I managed to crawl my way halfway through this little novel...and the only thing I want to do at this point is strangle the life out of it. I think this is some kind of story about infidelity & change...but the prose is so ludicrously purple, you could squeeze grape jelly out of the pages! My head throbbed trying to get through the endless sensory overload of the writing, which did everything but progress the story in any coherent fashion. I'm sure there will be fans of this kind of writing...but I am certainly not one of them. Never has such a short piece of writing been so laborious to read.

[Veronica Freeney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt a bit lost in this allegorical tale. Jordan's writing and his descriptive powers were the redeeming features for me in a book that just didn't work. It was too vague and maybe, if I am honest, its narrative was too disjointed. Over all it was a disappointing read.

[Stoner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This feels like you are reading a A24 movie. A good A24 movie.


Actual rating:- 3.5

[Alex Hubbard · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happened?! Loved it.

[Chloe Coffield · Rating 1 out of 5]

This piece was rather confusing to read. It was basically "wanna-be" poetry. It just felt like it was trying too hard to be something it clearly was not. Also what was the plot? The whole thing was a dream, (i think), but really it was all very unclear. There was one quote that really stuck out to me however, and that was, "Is it fair, he asked me, to have given us the memory of what was and the desire of what could be when we must suffer what is?". Really beautiful.

[Iru · Rating 2 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed how he described things. Quick read, but I either didn’t care much for the plot or didn’t fully understand what was going on.

[A. Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

It isn’t often that I read a book and get all the way to the end thinking I don’t know what’s going on, but that’s the case with Neil Jordan’s The Dream of the Beast. It is indeed a dream, a surrealist dream, and the protagonist’s transformation is drawn as a physical one, and might supposedly be an internal one, but behind that is a layer of cultural change as well. Sadly, these kinds of change, while concurrent, seem entirely unconnected. Eventually, others begin to mutate as well, so the “beast” isn’t isolated anymore, but for me, it’s a problem when a book doesn’t plant one foot, even one toe, solidly somewhere. I couldn’t even make a stab at identifying what kind of beast the beast is. Complete lack of definition and departure from reality isn’t really useful if a story is going to satisfy one of the purposes of story—to instruct or enlighten in some way. If a reader can’t suggest a conclusion, with some references to support that suggestion, then it’s difficult to see a point. The one interesting aspect of this book is the definite motif of flying and flying things, colourful birds and moths and: a bat. It’s the bat that’s the Jordanian thread. This bat talks to the beast, offers counsel, and explains that flying is a matter of desire, that everything is a matter of desire. Now that’s interesting in a novel by a man who was born in the town of Bram Stoker’s maternal relations, and who as a boy was afraid to walk past Stoker’s house in Dublin, and who grew up to be a filmmaker who has made two feature vampire movies. So far.

[Bobby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neil Jordan is one of my favorite film directors, so I went out of my way to find a good copy of this out of print book online. I was disappointed to find it abstract and cold, like as if David Hockney's paintings of pools were done by moonlight. Don't expect linear storytelling here, it's highly experimental and moody.

Also reminded me of Marguerite Duras.

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite the fact that it's a short quick read, I quit halfway through. It bored me. The prose style was ok, but not impressive enough to sustain such a sluggish plot.