Fever Dream

by Samanta Schweblin

Book Review , April 2, 2018

One reason traditional mysteries are satisfying is that everything is tied up and explained at the end. But a true horror story never gives you that way out. Fever Dream is a tiny book you can read in one sitting, and you might find yourself compulsively doing so, no matter how late at night you sit down. A woman, Amanda, talks with a boy, David, trying, with a panicky urgency, to understand a series of events that feels both inexplicable and inevitable to them: when exactly, they are driven to know, did their world leave its moorings? Do they find out? Do you? Schweblin, a young Argentinian master, spins out their tale with a delicate and strange precision that sustains the horror, and allows it to remain.

— Tom

Fever Dream was reviewed in Newsletter #180 on April 2, 2018. For more like this, and other bookish news, sign up for the newsletter .

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