Reviews
Description
"I am told I shine, I radiate ... It is the glow of celibacy, I expect; the bloom seen on the scrubbed cheeks of nuns ... A nun, anyway, may sublimate her sexual drive in such great love of God that she rises from the ground and has to be pinned down by the hem of her cloth to the cold and sweaty stones by her sisters singing, kneeling in the quire."
Dreaming of Dead People is an intimate portrait of a woman approaching middle-age, lonely, starved of love, yet avoiding the seductions of resentment. She visits Venice, observes families, dreams up fantasy lives and tours the highlands of Scotland. She recalls her country childhood, her relationship with her mother, her school and her animals. Pervading these recollections is her description of acute sexual frustration, at times in imagery of medieval poetry, with a crudeness that is both painful and passionate.
Acclaimed when it was first published, Dreaming of Dead People is a joyful, stark novel by one of the most individual voices of contemporary fiction.
"I am told I shine, I radiate ... It is the glow of celibacy, I expect; the bloom seen on the scrubbed cheeks of nuns ... A nun, anyway, may sublimate her sexual drive in such great love of God that she rises from the ground and has to be pinned down by the hem of her cloth to the cold and sweaty stones by her sisters singing, kneeling in the quire."
Dreaming of Dead People is an intimate portrait of a woman approaching middle-age, lonely, starved of love, yet avoiding the seductions of resentment. She visits Venice, observes families, dreams up fantasy lives and tours the highlands of Scotland. She recalls her country childhood, her relationship with her mother, her school and her animals. Pervading these recollections is her description of acute sexual frustration, at times in imagery of medieval poetry, with a crudeness that is both painful and passionate.
Acclaimed when it was first published, Dreaming of Dead People is a joyful, stark novel by one of the most individual voices of contemporary fiction.
Reviews