Dream Angus
The Celtic God of Dreams
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the beloved, bestselling author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series comes a delightful addition to the Myths series.
Dream Angus is one of the earliest of the Celtic deities, and one of the most beloved. Angus comes bounding over the heather with his bag of dreams to dispense to those who want them. He is lithe of foot and beautiful – as befits one who is also the Celtic Eros, the god of love, youth and beauty.
Angus is a playful trickster, given to frightening people and cattle. He will reveal to you in a dream your true love, if asked, and if in the mood. He is a romantic, and one of the main stories associated with him is his search for the young woman who had appeared to him in his dreams. Eventually he finds her, but she is under a spell which makes her assume the shape of a bird for a year. Angus changes himself into a swan and the two lovers fly off together.
In McCall Smith’s inimitable retelling of the myth, the setting is twentieth century Scotland. Angus is a psychotherapist who helps people understand their dreams, but there are limits to what he can reveal. Mesmerically weaving the modern day with the tales of the Celtic god, Alexander McCall Smith unites dream and reality, leaving us to wonder: what is life, but the pursuit of our dreams?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The bestselling author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels and the 44 Scotland Street novels has always included one-offs and detours in his oeuvre (including The Criminal Law of Botswana). Here, he turns in an elegant contemporary reworking of the ancient Celtic myth of the dream-giver god, Angus, familiar from Yeats's poetry. Lovely, fair Angus is the son of the terrible club-wielding god, Dagda, who sired the boy by ravishing the lovely water nymph Boann. The young boy who charms birds and inspires marvelous dreams is soon snatched from his mother and raised by Dagda's other son, the grown Midir. After some trials, Angus eventually learns who his true father is and tricks Dagda into relinquishing power. Smith fluidly weaves in contemporary vignettes of the dream god's benevolent influence, touching the lives of honeymooners on a windswept northern island; of a teenage boy sent away to boarding school in Scotland who tricks his mother into revealing who his true father is; and of a Toronto woman bereft at the discovery that her husband is having an affair. Angus, who presides over love and youth is also, it turns out, kindly to pigs. He is nicely reimagined in this spare, polished work.
