The Book of Dreams
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop, comes a delightful, offbeat, charming and bittersweet tale about the distance one man will travel for the sake of love and friendship.
Henri is about to meet his teenage son, Sam, for the first time. But as Henri crosses Hammersmith Bridge, an accident happens. Sam reads about it in the newspaper - his father is a hero, now in a coma in hospital. So their first meeting takes place there, alongside the hospital’s neurologist, whom the staff name God and is the first person to treat Sam as an equal in intelligence. And that’s because Sam, due to a condition called synaesthesia, can sense things the doctors can’t - he can see the colours of his father’s thoughts and dreams, and many relationships build from this.
This beautiful novel is warm, wise, wry look at what love means. It’s about fathers and sons, friendship and family, life, death and making peace with the past in order to find a future.
Praise for Nina George’s novels:
‘This charming tale is already a bestseller in Germany. For fans of Like Water for Chocolate and Amelie’ Red
‘George uses a heady cocktail of literature and more sensual pleasures to create a wonderfully offbeat romance’ Mail on Sunday
‘Glowing . . . layered with wit, enchanting writing and a love of books’ Daily Mail
‘A true gem for fiction lovers’ Good Housekeeping
‘A captivating curiosity, for those who still believe in love and books, friendship and food, happiness and romance’ Saga
‘A capricious, meandering journey of love, loss and wonderful food, so beautifully described. I enjoyed every moment’ Carole Matthews
‘If you're looking to be charmed right out of your own life for a few hours, sit down with this wise and winsome novel . . . Everything happens just as you want it to . . . from poignant moments to crystalline insights in exactly the right measure’ oprah.com
'An enchanting, uplifting read . . . the sort of book that acts as a soothing tonic as you read' Independent
'A life-affirming novel' Sunday Express
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Book of Dreams is gorgeous and hypnotic, gliding between the otherworldly, childlike dreams of Nina George’s hero, ex-war reporter Henri Skinner, and the stark reality of his hospital bedside. There, Henri’s estranged teenage son, Sam, sits diligently waiting, quickly becoming the star of George’s tale. Sam is a precociously bright synesthete—his senses work differently than most people’s—and his touching interactions with the book’s wildly interesting supporting cast lend this fantastical book a very human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
George's captivating novel (after The Little Paris Bookshop) centers on magical bonds between coma patients and their loved ones. Forty-five-year-old ex-war correspondent Henri Skinner is estranged from his 13-year-old son, and after a traffic accident leaves Henri in an induced coma, Sam starts to form something of a relationship with his father. Sam is gifted, intelligent, and synesthetic, blending the sounds of music and voices into shapes and colors, and although he can sometimes sense his father, he usually feels only darkness. He shares his sorrow with Eddie Tomlin, whom Henri had left over two years earlier but inexplicably named as his representative in his living will. Eddie, for her part, can't help loving the complex man who's "always both running away from himself and searching for his true identity." One other person in the hospital captures Sam's heart: 12-year-old Madelyn, a girl who's also in a coma after an accident that killed her family. Meanwhile, Henri and Madelyn are submerged in real and surreal memories of their earlier lives and their looming deaths within their comatose minds. This exploration of unfinished relationships has a haunting, evocative quality, and is a perfect, conversation-starting selection for book groups.
