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Cargando... The First Principles of Dreamingpor Beth Goobie
Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  buriedinprint | Oct 30, 2014 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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It's 1977, and Mary-Eve Hamilton (Mary for the Mother of God, Eve for the mother of mankind) is plodding through her final year at Eleusis High School. Mary-Eve's mother, famed prophetess at the Waiting for the Rapture End Times Tabernacle, regularly has visions, foams at the mouth, and falls down rigid. Her father, a popular deacon, hides his abuse behind a Sunday morning facade. Mary-Eve herself appears to be a dutiful teenager, her entire life regulated by the prescriptive rules of their church. Inside, she's biding her time and waiting for emancipation from her family's strictures and secrets. That day comes when Mary-Eve befriends Dee Eccles, an eighteen-year-old pagan goddess from the other side of everything. Dee instantly re-christens Mary-Eve with the name Jezebel, Jez for short, and begins her initiation into the women's mysteries of makeup, tight jeans, and otherworldly glory. But Jez quickly learns that Dee has her own secrets, and that demons are not confined to the Waiting for the Rapture End Times Tabernacle. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares  
 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (4.17)
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1
Mary-Eve Hamilton has already experienced some radical alterations in her understanding of her place in the world before readers meet her on the page.
“From that moment on, I knew my mother could not see me. The landscapes we inhabited were too different – what she saw was not what I saw; what surrounded her disdained and shut me out. By haunting her footsteps, I was able to catch occasional glimpses into her realm, but she wandered a part of the mind I could not enter; I stood on the edge of a world she had passed through to, a world I had been refused.”
Had Mary-Eve’s mother simply withdrawn, that would have been difficult enough, but her main source of communion is a religious fervour which distances her even further from her family and the wider community. The effect on Mary-Eve is dramatic and lasting.
Naming in this novel is crucial and Mary-Eve’s transformation into Jez (Jezebel) presents a swatch of conflict for readers, who understand her inner struggle to test and pass the limits she has felt upon her identity. Readers’ understanding grows as more information about the family’s experiences is revealed and challenges force Jez to grapple with questions about friendship, sexuality and faith, while testing the boundaries of her own self.
The style is intense and highly emotive, which reflects the heightened drama of Jez’s age and stage in life. This is emphasized by a series of dream-like passages which are almost overwhelming and work to depict the intensity of the transformation that she is experiencing.
The novel moves at a steady pace and culminates in a fervour of activity which is unexpected but, in hindsight, seems inevitable. Much of The First Principles of Dreaming is like a bad dream readers might want to shake, but it is a testament to the author’s skill that scenes perhaps-better-forgotten persist and linger in readers’ minds.
These thoughts first appeared here, on BuriedInPrint.