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The Law of Dreams
Driven from the only home he has known during Ireland’s Great Hunger of 1847, Fergus O’Brien makes the harrowing journey from County Clare to America, traveling with bold girls, pearl boys, navvies, and highwaymen. Along the way, Fergus meets his three passionate loves–Phoebe, Luke, and Molly–vivid, unforgettable characters, fresh and willful.
Based on Peter Behrens’s own family history, The Law of Dreams is lyrical, emotional, and thoroughly extraordinary–a searing tale of ardent struggle and ultimate perseverance.
Based on Peter Behrens’s own family history, The Law of Dreams is lyrical, emotional, and thoroughly extraordinary–a searing tale of ardent struggle and ultimate perseverance.
420 pages, Paperback
First published August 22, 2006
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About the author
Peter Behrens
40 books78 followersPeter Behrens is author of three novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (Steerforth/Random House); THE O'BRIENS (Pantheon), and CARRY ME (forthcoming Feb 2016, from Pantheon (US) & Anansi (Canada)). Also 2 collection sof short stories, NIGHT DRIVING (Macmillan) and TRAVELING LIGHT (Astoria). Behrens held a prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He was born in Montreal and is currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 331 reviews
September 18, 2016
Imagine that you’re a tenant farmer. You’re young, never been to school, never owned a decent pair of shoes. All your life you’ve lived on the same piece of rugged earth. Then the Great Famine comes, wipes out the farm. The tenant evicts your family but your father won’t go and you watch them starve until the soldiers come and set fire to the home and everyone in your family is murdered, but you. This is the set up for Peter Behrens amazing novel The Law of Dreams. It’s a historical novel about the famine in 1846, but it feels lived. It’s easily the most intense historical novel I’ve ever read. I’m a huge admirer of Andrea Barrett but the tension here surpasses Barrett’s work by a large magnitude. It’s a book about a wild boy alone in a wild country and I couldn’t put it down. Wonderful, wonderful writing.
June 13, 2016
My favorite novel of 2006
The Law of Dreams is a fearsome story of such prolonged agony and unquenchable spirit that you can't escape till the final page abandons you to astonished silence. Peter Behrens, a screenwriter who lives in Maine, based this debut novel on his family's history in Ireland, but the private tragedy he describes was common to hundreds of thousands of people during the Great Famine of 1847, and the language he uses constantly soars above that calamity toward the mystery of human struggle.
His young hero, Fergus O'Brien, endures abuses and deprivations that would make a lesser man feral, but there's a native decency in him, a natural grace that renders his decision to survive all the more agonizing. He belongs to a tenant family that subsists for 10 months of every year on the potatoes they grow on a quarter-acre of mountainous land. It's a tough existence, but Fergus prides himself on caring for his mother and sisters, and there's pleasure in the success of his labor: "Potatoes were not made or cut , like the farmer's hay or corn," Behrens writes. "They were lifted , joyfully, the surprise of the world."
We meet Fergus just before a virulent mold spreads across Ireland, withering and blighting the country's crop. Throughout the novel, Behrens stays close to Fergus's experience and knowledge, but everything that Fergus witnesses resonates with the horrible facts of this period. About a third of the 8 million people in Ireland lived almost exclusively on potatoes before the blight struck. Farmers were completely helpless to stop it. Cruel economic policies in England quickly exacerbated the situation, and widespread poverty, starvation and disease followed. Those who survived (and many who were soon to die) took to the roads, desperate for food.
That's the general history most of us know, but in this extraordinary novel Behrens conveys a kind of visceral comprehension of the events that only one who survived them could surpass. Ten weeks into the famine, Fergus's stubborn father still refuses to take his family away, even as their landlord rides around the mountain knocking down shacks and sending families off with a little money. In the first of many unforgettable scenes, Fergus's siblings and parents are finally burned alive in their beds, too weak with hunger even to object. Only Fergus survives, and, in what's considered a great act of charity, he's deposited in a workhouse, where he's immediately stripped, shaved and sprayed with acid to kill the lice. "Paupers lay about the yard," Behrens writes, "soft as gutted trout."
Fergus soon realizes that the workhouse is a trap where he'll either be starved to death or carried off by fever. Over and over, he confronts the frightening powerlessness of his position, but it never loses its ability to shock him -- or us: "Awareness pierces the chest like a spike being driven in. The world doesn't belong to you. Perhaps you belong to the world, but that's another matter." Fergus reaches out everywhere for friendship and love; he's a kind, loyal young man, but he's doomed to outlive his companions, constantly forced to pull pennies from the pockets of freshly dead friends who won't need them anymore. "You had to stay alive," Behrens writes, "every instinct told you. Stay in your life as long as you can. If only to see what would happen. Every breath told you to keep breathing."
When he manages to break out of the workhouse, his ordeal continues: He joins a gang of young thieves, he lives in a whorehouse, and he works on the rails spreading across Ireland almost as fast as the potato blight. All this time, he dreams of a place called America, about which he knows absolutely nothing. Still, a vague sense of its possibility eventually draws him across the Atlantic in one of the novel's most arduous sections.
The Law of Dreams rings with a strange, hard poetry, a mingling of Behrens's rich narrative voice and scraps of startling wisdom that seem to emanate directly from Fergus's mind. Here he is in Liverpool, outside a pub, starving and barefoot, as always:
"Trying to make up his mind, he hopped restlessly from one foot to another, one coin in each fist. The door opened and [a] pack of thick-shouldered men came out, and he caught a tantalizing whiff of the smoky, meaty atmosphere within.
"You could stand outside, bootless and chewing fear like a baby; or take the bold plunge. Offer a coin for a feed and see if they would take it.
"The world, latent; a gun loaded with chance and mistakes."
In the life of this determined young man, Behrens illuminates one of the 19th century's greatest tragedies and the massive migration it launched. A novel that animates the past this vibrantly should make volumes of mere history blush. "Life burns hot," Fergus thinks, and so do these pages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
The Law of Dreams is a fearsome story of such prolonged agony and unquenchable spirit that you can't escape till the final page abandons you to astonished silence. Peter Behrens, a screenwriter who lives in Maine, based this debut novel on his family's history in Ireland, but the private tragedy he describes was common to hundreds of thousands of people during the Great Famine of 1847, and the language he uses constantly soars above that calamity toward the mystery of human struggle.
His young hero, Fergus O'Brien, endures abuses and deprivations that would make a lesser man feral, but there's a native decency in him, a natural grace that renders his decision to survive all the more agonizing. He belongs to a tenant family that subsists for 10 months of every year on the potatoes they grow on a quarter-acre of mountainous land. It's a tough existence, but Fergus prides himself on caring for his mother and sisters, and there's pleasure in the success of his labor: "Potatoes were not made or cut , like the farmer's hay or corn," Behrens writes. "They were lifted , joyfully, the surprise of the world."
We meet Fergus just before a virulent mold spreads across Ireland, withering and blighting the country's crop. Throughout the novel, Behrens stays close to Fergus's experience and knowledge, but everything that Fergus witnesses resonates with the horrible facts of this period. About a third of the 8 million people in Ireland lived almost exclusively on potatoes before the blight struck. Farmers were completely helpless to stop it. Cruel economic policies in England quickly exacerbated the situation, and widespread poverty, starvation and disease followed. Those who survived (and many who were soon to die) took to the roads, desperate for food.
That's the general history most of us know, but in this extraordinary novel Behrens conveys a kind of visceral comprehension of the events that only one who survived them could surpass. Ten weeks into the famine, Fergus's stubborn father still refuses to take his family away, even as their landlord rides around the mountain knocking down shacks and sending families off with a little money. In the first of many unforgettable scenes, Fergus's siblings and parents are finally burned alive in their beds, too weak with hunger even to object. Only Fergus survives, and, in what's considered a great act of charity, he's deposited in a workhouse, where he's immediately stripped, shaved and sprayed with acid to kill the lice. "Paupers lay about the yard," Behrens writes, "soft as gutted trout."
Fergus soon realizes that the workhouse is a trap where he'll either be starved to death or carried off by fever. Over and over, he confronts the frightening powerlessness of his position, but it never loses its ability to shock him -- or us: "Awareness pierces the chest like a spike being driven in. The world doesn't belong to you. Perhaps you belong to the world, but that's another matter." Fergus reaches out everywhere for friendship and love; he's a kind, loyal young man, but he's doomed to outlive his companions, constantly forced to pull pennies from the pockets of freshly dead friends who won't need them anymore. "You had to stay alive," Behrens writes, "every instinct told you. Stay in your life as long as you can. If only to see what would happen. Every breath told you to keep breathing."
When he manages to break out of the workhouse, his ordeal continues: He joins a gang of young thieves, he lives in a whorehouse, and he works on the rails spreading across Ireland almost as fast as the potato blight. All this time, he dreams of a place called America, about which he knows absolutely nothing. Still, a vague sense of its possibility eventually draws him across the Atlantic in one of the novel's most arduous sections.
The Law of Dreams rings with a strange, hard poetry, a mingling of Behrens's rich narrative voice and scraps of startling wisdom that seem to emanate directly from Fergus's mind. Here he is in Liverpool, outside a pub, starving and barefoot, as always:
"Trying to make up his mind, he hopped restlessly from one foot to another, one coin in each fist. The door opened and [a] pack of thick-shouldered men came out, and he caught a tantalizing whiff of the smoky, meaty atmosphere within.
"You could stand outside, bootless and chewing fear like a baby; or take the bold plunge. Offer a coin for a feed and see if they would take it.
"The world, latent; a gun loaded with chance and mistakes."
In the life of this determined young man, Behrens illuminates one of the 19th century's greatest tragedies and the massive migration it launched. A novel that animates the past this vibrantly should make volumes of mere history blush. "Life burns hot," Fergus thinks, and so do these pages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
May 3, 2007
My sister-in-law’s husband received this as a gift for Christmas, and when I read the fly-leaf I couldn’t figure out how it had slipped beneath my radar. This is exactly the sort of book I look for. Set during the great potato famine in Ireland, the story follows a boy named Fergus as he watches the simple world he knew of mountains, fields, and cattle in County Clare crumble and die in the face of the terrible blight. After his entire family dies and he is ejected from the land of the farmer whose tenants his family was, he gradually makes his way through a series of trials from the mountains of western Ireland to Dublin to Liverpool and eventually on to America. The story is expertly paced, with the adventures moving quickly enough to keep you turning the pages, but not so quickly that you can’t appreciate the trials he goes through and relish in his triumphs, however small they may be. A great telling of a horrible tale, and another great story about the ability of the human soul to overcome anything.
May 20, 2011
Wow. This book was god-awful.
I read it because The Cat lent it to me. The Cat is a colleague, so called, because he meowed during a conference call in his first week of work. As it turned out later, this is perfectly in keeping with his personality. One day The Cat appeared in my office bearing a water-logged copy of this book. Apparently, we had some prior conversation about it that I can't recall. He had read it and his sister had read it.
I pretty much hated it. It is the story of an Irish boy's immigration to North America.
For one, there is the latent sexism/homophobia. This is a book that clearly prides itself on its gritty realism. The main character's parents are burnt alive during the potato famine. He watches two childhood loves brutally and violently killed within minutes of each other. I wanted to tell the author, "I get it, I get it. No punches pulled here." Except for one. For a time, Fergus, the main character stays at a whorehouse in Liverpool. The madam convinces him to try whoring himself out to older gentlemen. But at the last minute, Fergus decides not to go through with it and moves on.
REALLY?! In this book, a little girl is raped to death and women are repeatedly beaten and abused. But I got the feeling that the author didn't quite have the heart to put his main character through prostitution. The last minute save doesn't quite work in the same novel as death by rape.
Then, there is the "deep thoughts" that usually occupy the final few sentences of every chapter. They are almost too easy to mock.
A sample of actual chapter or section closing sentences:
"Sometimes your heart cracks and tells you what to do."
"What you lost weakened you, could kill you. What you wanted kept you going. What you wanted gave you strength."
"Anger, what is it? It's nothing pure. It's yourself you despise."
"Threads attaching you to another person, to a woman, are biting and intense. You try to gather them in your hand and they are almost invisible but how they sting and cut."
Argh. Terrible.
I read it because The Cat lent it to me. The Cat is a colleague, so called, because he meowed during a conference call in his first week of work. As it turned out later, this is perfectly in keeping with his personality. One day The Cat appeared in my office bearing a water-logged copy of this book. Apparently, we had some prior conversation about it that I can't recall. He had read it and his sister had read it.
I pretty much hated it. It is the story of an Irish boy's immigration to North America.
For one, there is the latent sexism/homophobia. This is a book that clearly prides itself on its gritty realism. The main character's parents are burnt alive during the potato famine. He watches two childhood loves brutally and violently killed within minutes of each other. I wanted to tell the author, "I get it, I get it. No punches pulled here." Except for one. For a time, Fergus, the main character stays at a whorehouse in Liverpool. The madam convinces him to try whoring himself out to older gentlemen. But at the last minute, Fergus decides not to go through with it and moves on.
REALLY?! In this book, a little girl is raped to death and women are repeatedly beaten and abused. But I got the feeling that the author didn't quite have the heart to put his main character through prostitution. The last minute save doesn't quite work in the same novel as death by rape.
Then, there is the "deep thoughts" that usually occupy the final few sentences of every chapter. They are almost too easy to mock.
A sample of actual chapter or section closing sentences:
"Sometimes your heart cracks and tells you what to do."
"What you lost weakened you, could kill you. What you wanted kept you going. What you wanted gave you strength."
"Anger, what is it? It's nothing pure. It's yourself you despise."
"Threads attaching you to another person, to a woman, are biting and intense. You try to gather them in your hand and they are almost invisible but how they sting and cut."
Argh. Terrible.
March 31, 2007
This book got some favorable reviews, including one from on-call Irish expert Malachy McCourt... but I had some problems with it. It's set during the Great Hunger in Ireland (circa 1847) when a huge number of Irish people died or emigrated(1 million and 2 million, respectively; it's still the worst famine on record, in terms of numbers), which, believe it or not, happens to be a subject I've read a lot about. I felt the main character managed to slip through things just a bit too easily. Horrible things happen, but he's always just an observer. I suppose it makes sense, the ones who survived managed to avoid all these horrific things; but he manages to do it with fairly little cost to himself. It all seemed too facile. To say more would involve giving away plot points, so I'll stop now. Still worth a look, but not the best I've read on this topic.
May 1, 2025
The Law of Dreams is historical fiction that follows the journey of Fergus O'Brien, a young Irish lad who loses his family during the Great Famine of the 1840s and is forced to flee his homeland. It captures both the devastating reality of the potato famine and the subsequent journey of survival. Behrens has based this story on his own family’s history.
Fergus is a compelling protagonist who transforms from a naive farm boy to a hardened survivor. His journey takes him across Ireland, Wales, England, and eventually to North America, and through his eyes, we witness the social and economic forces that shaped the mid-19th century. He meets a variety of people along the way – some kind and others ruthless.
The title refers to the driving force that propels Fergus forward — the understanding that to survive, one must keep moving and leave the past behind. This theme recurs throughout the novel. The narrative moves at an uneven pace, with some sections feeling rushed compared to others, and it felt long in places. If I hadn’t read many similar stories, I probably would have liked it even more.
Fergus is a compelling protagonist who transforms from a naive farm boy to a hardened survivor. His journey takes him across Ireland, Wales, England, and eventually to North America, and through his eyes, we witness the social and economic forces that shaped the mid-19th century. He meets a variety of people along the way – some kind and others ruthless.
The title refers to the driving force that propels Fergus forward — the understanding that to survive, one must keep moving and leave the past behind. This theme recurs throughout the novel. The narrative moves at an uneven pace, with some sections feeling rushed compared to others, and it felt long in places. If I hadn’t read many similar stories, I probably would have liked it even more.
February 20, 2013
Very good novel. Although it contains many brutal and uncensored scenes during which the characters (including Fergus) seem to lack emotion, this novel contains well-written, heart twisting events. The rough, uncensored writing style only adds to the thought that we are all alone in this world and are constantly crushed by life. And if this novel is an accurate portrayment of Ireland/England in the 19th century: boy am I glad I was born in the 21st! (and in Holland for that matter)
February 22, 2009
My favourite line from this book: "Potatoes were not made or cut, like the farmer's hay or corn, they were lifted, joyfully, the surprise of the world." I'm always a softie for the Irish stories; it's in my blood. I wanted to hear more about the main character's life once he made it to Canada, but the tale of his journey was still a captivating read.
February 22, 2010
Awkwardly Written
The writing in this book can be very awkward, and sometimes can just be plain bad. The narrative voice is also confusing. E.g.:
{ 'I tell you, one way or another you will be clear of those people. Over population, sir, is the curse of this country.'
And it is the truth. }
So in the above, 'And it is the truth' seems to come from the narrator. So does the narrator really believe that the disaster of the potato famine was because of over population?
Then the narrator seems to switch voice and becomes not fully omniscient but omniscient limited, granting himself or herself access to the mind of the main character, Fergus. But then the point of view seems to randomly switch again throughout the narrative:
{ Phobe was nowhere in his field of vision as he was hung over Abner's shoulder like a trussed boar. Perhaps she had left the room. Perhaps she ran upstairs, threw herself on her bed, and covered her ears with pillows so she wouldn't hear his protests as Abner was lugging him from the house. Perhaps she lay very still the way her mother, trying to avoid another rack of coughing, had kept perfectly still on her deathbed, like an animal hopelessly caught in the jaws of another, larger animal. }
So here we seem to be entering the mind of Phobe now, thinking about how her sick mother was during this scene. It definitely can't come from Fergus's mind, for he wouldn't know the personal details of her sick mother. I think the full omniscient narrator comes back in to this scene. However the author doesn't seem quite confident to bring it back fully, which is evident by the constant use of 'perhaps'. Whoever's point of view it is, it doesn't work.
More sloppy point of view shifts:
{ The other son, Saul, had always had a jeering tendency, but Abner was usually kind, and good at working cattle. Cattle could not be worked by anyone who hated them or feared them or did not comprehend their sensitivity.
You could have been cattle, or a horse. Or a rabbit. Fox, badger. Anything that lived on the mountain. A stone, a piece of turf, white root of a mustard plant. }
I have no idea who is saying or supposed to be thinking the above second paragraph. It almost seems that the narrator has randomly had an idea and just blurted it out.
Then you have random italic sentences that are supposed to be the internal thinking of characters. Supposedly they are Fergus's thoughts, maybe, but you're never quite sure since the point of view is thrown all over the place:
{ His breeches were nice yellow whipcord, fresh and new. Beautiful coat and boots and -
You're no one's keeper now.
Paupers were crowding around the fire like cattle in a storm, the stink of their bodies unfurling in the violent warmth. }
Why the italic sentence 'your no one's keeper now' was just blurted out, and who is saying it, I have no idea.
Also transitions from dialogue to narrative are done badly:
{ 'You'll get the relapse, then. I am Murty Larry O'Sullivan. I can sniff the ones to live and ones to die.'
'Which am I?'
But Warden Conachree came out on the steps, shaking a bell, the sound banging across the stone yard, and Fergus followed Murty into one of the ranks hastily forming. }
Then there is figurative language that just does not work:
{ 'Distinct mind like a polished ax.' }
What?
{ 'Looked like a rabbit with his pink chin and white flecks of beard.' }
When does a rabbit have a pink chin? And I wouldn't say they have beards either?
Then there is the very awkward:
{ He was standing on warm flags in the farmhouse kitchen, a large room with low beams and a tin-plated range throwing heat that smashed into his chest painfully, as though the last thing he'd been keeping safe had been broken into.
Your soul lived in your chest, did it not. }
So above we are told, in a very unskilful way, that Fergus felt heat smashing into his chest and that it broke into something. The writer is then correct that we wouldn't understand what he is talking about, so then adds in the next sentence 'your soul lived in your chest, did it not.' So now we understand that what had been broken into was his soul. Of course it still doesn't make sense and what an awkward way to put something.
The plot of this book is decent and seems to be organised quite well. You can tell the author has done his research and uses the language of the time to good effect. Maybe if I read the whole book I might have given a rating of 3, depending if the plot stayed organised. But you really can't give more than that, and, I really can't continue reading such awkward writing.
The writing in this book can be very awkward, and sometimes can just be plain bad. The narrative voice is also confusing. E.g.:
{ 'I tell you, one way or another you will be clear of those people. Over population, sir, is the curse of this country.'
And it is the truth. }
So in the above, 'And it is the truth' seems to come from the narrator. So does the narrator really believe that the disaster of the potato famine was because of over population?
Then the narrator seems to switch voice and becomes not fully omniscient but omniscient limited, granting himself or herself access to the mind of the main character, Fergus. But then the point of view seems to randomly switch again throughout the narrative:
{ Phobe was nowhere in his field of vision as he was hung over Abner's shoulder like a trussed boar. Perhaps she had left the room. Perhaps she ran upstairs, threw herself on her bed, and covered her ears with pillows so she wouldn't hear his protests as Abner was lugging him from the house. Perhaps she lay very still the way her mother, trying to avoid another rack of coughing, had kept perfectly still on her deathbed, like an animal hopelessly caught in the jaws of another, larger animal. }
So here we seem to be entering the mind of Phobe now, thinking about how her sick mother was during this scene. It definitely can't come from Fergus's mind, for he wouldn't know the personal details of her sick mother. I think the full omniscient narrator comes back in to this scene. However the author doesn't seem quite confident to bring it back fully, which is evident by the constant use of 'perhaps'. Whoever's point of view it is, it doesn't work.
More sloppy point of view shifts:
{ The other son, Saul, had always had a jeering tendency, but Abner was usually kind, and good at working cattle. Cattle could not be worked by anyone who hated them or feared them or did not comprehend their sensitivity.
You could have been cattle, or a horse. Or a rabbit. Fox, badger. Anything that lived on the mountain. A stone, a piece of turf, white root of a mustard plant. }
I have no idea who is saying or supposed to be thinking the above second paragraph. It almost seems that the narrator has randomly had an idea and just blurted it out.
Then you have random italic sentences that are supposed to be the internal thinking of characters. Supposedly they are Fergus's thoughts, maybe, but you're never quite sure since the point of view is thrown all over the place:
{ His breeches were nice yellow whipcord, fresh and new. Beautiful coat and boots and -
You're no one's keeper now.
Paupers were crowding around the fire like cattle in a storm, the stink of their bodies unfurling in the violent warmth. }
Why the italic sentence 'your no one's keeper now' was just blurted out, and who is saying it, I have no idea.
Also transitions from dialogue to narrative are done badly:
{ 'You'll get the relapse, then. I am Murty Larry O'Sullivan. I can sniff the ones to live and ones to die.'
'Which am I?'
But Warden Conachree came out on the steps, shaking a bell, the sound banging across the stone yard, and Fergus followed Murty into one of the ranks hastily forming. }
Then there is figurative language that just does not work:
{ 'Distinct mind like a polished ax.' }
What?
{ 'Looked like a rabbit with his pink chin and white flecks of beard.' }
When does a rabbit have a pink chin? And I wouldn't say they have beards either?
Then there is the very awkward:
{ He was standing on warm flags in the farmhouse kitchen, a large room with low beams and a tin-plated range throwing heat that smashed into his chest painfully, as though the last thing he'd been keeping safe had been broken into.
Your soul lived in your chest, did it not. }
So above we are told, in a very unskilful way, that Fergus felt heat smashing into his chest and that it broke into something. The writer is then correct that we wouldn't understand what he is talking about, so then adds in the next sentence 'your soul lived in your chest, did it not.' So now we understand that what had been broken into was his soul. Of course it still doesn't make sense and what an awkward way to put something.
The plot of this book is decent and seems to be organised quite well. You can tell the author has done his research and uses the language of the time to good effect. Maybe if I read the whole book I might have given a rating of 3, depending if the plot stayed organised. But you really can't give more than that, and, I really can't continue reading such awkward writing.
January 5, 2015
A rough and graphic novel, but nevertheless an effortless and good read. Fergus goes through a lot of misery in is life during the infamous Irish Famine. He travels through Ireland, England, Wales and then through America, trying to find his way and to cope with the past and to "keep moving", which is in other words: the Law of Dreams.
Fergus goes through a lot, and sadly a lot of people die. I did not get attached to characters and did not really mind them dying. I did feel sympathy for Fergus, he's the only one left with the grief of all those people dying around him. Other than the main character nobody really got my sympathy. The other characters felt very cold to me, emotionless.
The omniscient narrator wasn't something I was amused by either. It felt out of place. I think those "thoughts" would've come across better if it was worked in with the narrative, and not on the side and separated from the dialogue.
What really irked me were the women in the novel in combination with Fergus. He always seems to be in need of female companionship, someone to pine for, someone to draw happiness from. Life is very tough on him, indeed, but his constant need for women really started to annoy me after a hundred pages.
Other than the dying, the omniscient narrator and the women in the novel, I really liked it. It was not any effort going through the book, there was enough suspense to keep me reading. I was glad with the way it ends, and that's not a feeling that I get a lot from books.
Fergus goes through a lot, and sadly a lot of people die. I did not get attached to characters and did not really mind them dying. I did feel sympathy for Fergus, he's the only one left with the grief of all those people dying around him. Other than the main character nobody really got my sympathy. The other characters felt very cold to me, emotionless.
The omniscient narrator wasn't something I was amused by either. It felt out of place. I think those "thoughts" would've come across better if it was worked in with the narrative, and not on the side and separated from the dialogue.
What really irked me were the women in the novel in combination with Fergus. He always seems to be in need of female companionship, someone to pine for, someone to draw happiness from. Life is very tough on him, indeed, but his constant need for women really started to annoy me after a hundred pages.
Other than the dying, the omniscient narrator and the women in the novel, I really liked it. It was not any effort going through the book, there was enough suspense to keep me reading. I was glad with the way it ends, and that's not a feeling that I get a lot from books.
October 14, 2014
As a look into the tragic lives of the victims of the Irish Potato famine this book works well as it paints a vivid picture of the grim reality of the lives and deaths of so many people. As a journey into the thoughts of one person who witnesses so much death and destruction and tries to come to terms with still having a soul this book also works. Unfortunately it's a. 3 star book to me as the writing style is so choppy and terse. Initailly it has a poetic dreamy feel but after awhile it becomes tiresome and I started to lomg for a paragraph that I could really sink my teeth into instead of short 5 word descriptions/ statements! This book won the Canadian Governor Generals award and I should haveknown from past history that I would ultimately be disappointed as I have been with so many past GG's.
February 4, 2015
Over the years a myriad of books dealing with the Irish potato famine and the resulting immigration to the United States have appeared. Some are non-fiction and others fall into the historical fiction category. Peter Behrens’ novel, THE LAW OF DREAMS is a wonderful addition to the historical fiction genre encapsulating the plight of the Irish in mid-nineteenth century England as they made their way across the Atlantic. What separates Behrens’ effort from the rest is the poignancy and sensitivity of his story and the development of his characters.
The novel begins as Own Carmichael, returns from the county seat at Enis where he is informed by his land agent, who manages the affairs for the landlord, the sixth Earl that he must “eject” as he terms it, the peasants who work his land. The reason given is that it is more profitable to raise sheep for mutton than have the peasants work the land. The agent warns Owen he must carry out the landlord’s orders or he would be responsible for the rent. For the agent, “sheep, not people is what you want to fatten. Mutton is worth money. Mutton is wanted, mutton is short. Of Irishmen, there’s an exceeding surplus.” (5) As he returns to the farm, Owen contemplates what choices are available to him. As he walked home he passed women and their naked children who were scrounging in a turnip field for survival. From this point on Behrens’ novel unfolds through the eyes of Fergus, a fifteen year old boy whose family is about to be “ejected.”
The core of the novel takes place in the late 1840s as Behrens describes Fergus’ life once alonenes is forced on him. We follow him through the Irish countryside, aboard ship to Dublin and Liverpool, the strenuous Atlantic crossing, and his final arrival in Canada. Throughout, the reader is exposed to the horrendous conditions which the Irish must cope; hunger and poverty permeate every page. From the fields, the work house, railroad construction, or aboard ship, people make life altering decisions each day. Along the reader’s journey, Behrens provides heart rendering descriptions of the Irish underclass as they have to deal with their daily travails. From descriptions of Liverpool’s shanty areas, red light districts, to labor on the railroads, the reader is enveloped by the story. Evidence of the Industrial Revolution’s grip on English towns and cities are everywhere. Fergus chooses the life of a tramp on the road over the freedom of the railroad for a time, and then gives in to his loss of freedom as he realizes he must go to America.
What makes this novel a success is its ability to integrate the underclass that the Irish poor represent throughout the story line. We witness Fergus’ family’s struggle to survive under a tenant based land system that is skewed toward the land lord. A system designed to keep Irish peasants in poverty from generation to generation. We witness the death of Fergus’ family something that is easily predictable based on the situation. Next is Fergus’ struggle to survive living on the road as a tramp, a path with its own self-contained rules that represents a very violent society. Rural life is a day to day battle, but once Fergus meets Arthur we are provided a window into the racial divide that the Irish confront each day in Liverpool. Be it street riots, life in a brothel, working laying railroad tracks, or trying to avoid becoming a victim of typhus, the hard ships endured by Fergus seem to constantly multiply. Perhaps the most stirring aspect of the story is the voyage on the “Laramie” that brings Fergus and Molly together as they try to reach America and avail themselves of a life of freedom and opportunity.
Throughout, Behrens develops an interesting dynamic among his characters. Arthur, who tries to educate Fergus in a world apart from serfdom, and Molly, a hardened women who employs her body as a tool to live another day. Once Fergus falls in love with her we are privy to a caring but cruel relationship. On board ship we meet Mr. Ormsby who will change Fergus’ life. We are exposed to the individual stories of the passengers who we must admire for their courage as they try to escape poverty and make their way across the ocean. Each person has their own fears and anxieties about their pasts and what awaits them in the future.
Behrens’ dialogue reflects the social class divide and ethnic nationalism that pervades Ireland that includes the rural and urban existence of the English poor. The author’s command of language, the dialects he presents and the meaning of each phrase provides insight into a story that he tells that reflects the experience of his own family. As he makes transitions from each scene to the next, be it Fergus’ experience in the work house, the bog boys tramping in the countryside, life in the Dragon House brothel, or coping with typhus aboard ship we experience the nasty side effects of the Industrial Revolution that drive men like Mr. Coole to abandon his religion to bring his children to America. All of these characters create their own stories within the overall plot line that captures the reader’s attention and keeps them turning the pages. Behrens is very adept at introducing new characters and then dispatching them, with only Fergus feeling their loss as they pass through the novel. The end result is that the author leaves the reader wondering what will happen to Fergus, a question that can be easily resolved by reading his latest novel, THE O’BRIENS.
The novel begins as Own Carmichael, returns from the county seat at Enis where he is informed by his land agent, who manages the affairs for the landlord, the sixth Earl that he must “eject” as he terms it, the peasants who work his land. The reason given is that it is more profitable to raise sheep for mutton than have the peasants work the land. The agent warns Owen he must carry out the landlord’s orders or he would be responsible for the rent. For the agent, “sheep, not people is what you want to fatten. Mutton is worth money. Mutton is wanted, mutton is short. Of Irishmen, there’s an exceeding surplus.” (5) As he returns to the farm, Owen contemplates what choices are available to him. As he walked home he passed women and their naked children who were scrounging in a turnip field for survival. From this point on Behrens’ novel unfolds through the eyes of Fergus, a fifteen year old boy whose family is about to be “ejected.”
The core of the novel takes place in the late 1840s as Behrens describes Fergus’ life once alonenes is forced on him. We follow him through the Irish countryside, aboard ship to Dublin and Liverpool, the strenuous Atlantic crossing, and his final arrival in Canada. Throughout, the reader is exposed to the horrendous conditions which the Irish must cope; hunger and poverty permeate every page. From the fields, the work house, railroad construction, or aboard ship, people make life altering decisions each day. Along the reader’s journey, Behrens provides heart rendering descriptions of the Irish underclass as they have to deal with their daily travails. From descriptions of Liverpool’s shanty areas, red light districts, to labor on the railroads, the reader is enveloped by the story. Evidence of the Industrial Revolution’s grip on English towns and cities are everywhere. Fergus chooses the life of a tramp on the road over the freedom of the railroad for a time, and then gives in to his loss of freedom as he realizes he must go to America.
What makes this novel a success is its ability to integrate the underclass that the Irish poor represent throughout the story line. We witness Fergus’ family’s struggle to survive under a tenant based land system that is skewed toward the land lord. A system designed to keep Irish peasants in poverty from generation to generation. We witness the death of Fergus’ family something that is easily predictable based on the situation. Next is Fergus’ struggle to survive living on the road as a tramp, a path with its own self-contained rules that represents a very violent society. Rural life is a day to day battle, but once Fergus meets Arthur we are provided a window into the racial divide that the Irish confront each day in Liverpool. Be it street riots, life in a brothel, working laying railroad tracks, or trying to avoid becoming a victim of typhus, the hard ships endured by Fergus seem to constantly multiply. Perhaps the most stirring aspect of the story is the voyage on the “Laramie” that brings Fergus and Molly together as they try to reach America and avail themselves of a life of freedom and opportunity.
Throughout, Behrens develops an interesting dynamic among his characters. Arthur, who tries to educate Fergus in a world apart from serfdom, and Molly, a hardened women who employs her body as a tool to live another day. Once Fergus falls in love with her we are privy to a caring but cruel relationship. On board ship we meet Mr. Ormsby who will change Fergus’ life. We are exposed to the individual stories of the passengers who we must admire for their courage as they try to escape poverty and make their way across the ocean. Each person has their own fears and anxieties about their pasts and what awaits them in the future.
Behrens’ dialogue reflects the social class divide and ethnic nationalism that pervades Ireland that includes the rural and urban existence of the English poor. The author’s command of language, the dialects he presents and the meaning of each phrase provides insight into a story that he tells that reflects the experience of his own family. As he makes transitions from each scene to the next, be it Fergus’ experience in the work house, the bog boys tramping in the countryside, life in the Dragon House brothel, or coping with typhus aboard ship we experience the nasty side effects of the Industrial Revolution that drive men like Mr. Coole to abandon his religion to bring his children to America. All of these characters create their own stories within the overall plot line that captures the reader’s attention and keeps them turning the pages. Behrens is very adept at introducing new characters and then dispatching them, with only Fergus feeling their loss as they pass through the novel. The end result is that the author leaves the reader wondering what will happen to Fergus, a question that can be easily resolved by reading his latest novel, THE O’BRIENS.
February 26, 2008
It's a given that the majority of students learn about Ireland's Great Famine of 1847, the resulting exodus and diaspora, in high school and college history classes. Also, that unless the Famine is part of an individual's personal, family consciousness, much of what is remembered is distilled facts of distant history, despite the staggeringly epic consequences of this tragedy.
The Law of Dreams is an original, classic journey story of one man's odyssey from extreme poverty and depridation and the terrors of the Great Famine and typhus outbreak.Fergus is an unlikely hero, a 19th century Odysseus, who battles hunger and bigotry rather than warriors and gods.
Peter Behren's breathes raw, lusty, and sometimes brittle air into late nineteenth century Ireland, England, Canada, and the idea of America, without employing tired clichès. In the process of wandering with Fergus, the novel just may prod modern consciences with the plight of the present dayimmigrant searching for a new and better life.
A fabulous read
The Law of Dreams is an original, classic journey story of one man's odyssey from extreme poverty and depridation and the terrors of the Great Famine and typhus outbreak.Fergus is an unlikely hero, a 19th century Odysseus, who battles hunger and bigotry rather than warriors and gods.
Peter Behren's breathes raw, lusty, and sometimes brittle air into late nineteenth century Ireland, England, Canada, and the idea of America, without employing tired clichès. In the process of wandering with Fergus, the novel just may prod modern consciences with the plight of the present dayimmigrant searching for a new and better life.
A fabulous read
November 12, 2008
"Law of Dreams" recounts the odyssey of a young Irish boy, driven from his home by the horrors of the Famine and the injustices of British rule, left to survive amidst the growing chaos and anarchy of Famine-era Ireland, forced to weather the hardships and violence of Liverpool and Wales at the peak of the industrial revolution, before facing the interminable passage to the New World aboard a typhus-infested ship. The story is told with a gritty realism that displaces the romanticism that pervades other immigrant tales with a grim appreciation for the desperation, suffering and perseverance that the Irish emigrants must have experienced. I give it four instead of five stars because I'm not a fan of the terse Hemingway-esque prose with which Behrens tells the story, but it is a great portrait of Ireland during the Famine and the unbelievably brutal, disorganized an unjust experience of emigrating to the US in the 19th century.
February 9, 2011
Behrens does not candy coat this emigrant's tale. Law of Dreams is animalistic in its portrayal of Fergus's flight from Ireland. Behren's writing is beautiful and poignantly clear. His writing is full of Fergus's questioning thoughts that make the reader question her thoughts, as well. "Are you a part of the the world, like a bird, an apple tree, a fish or the sea itself? Or are you here to judge it, everything in it, including yourself?" (321) Fantastic.
Fergus was besieged with guilt for surviving over and over again. His journey was like a violent birth! His unrelenting loyalties ultimately made him stronger emotionally, physically and fiscally. The reader is left knowing that Fergus will survive. America really would be his dreamland--a place he had never let himself go to, mentally, before he actually, physically landed there. Finally, Fergus finds loyalty within himself and draws strength from it, bracing himself for his future.
Fergus was besieged with guilt for surviving over and over again. His journey was like a violent birth! His unrelenting loyalties ultimately made him stronger emotionally, physically and fiscally. The reader is left knowing that Fergus will survive. America really would be his dreamland--a place he had never let himself go to, mentally, before he actually, physically landed there. Finally, Fergus finds loyalty within himself and draws strength from it, bracing himself for his future.
January 31, 2009
Further evidence to my belief that the Irish tell the best stories. THis is an Odyssey-like tale of a young Irish man left orphaned and homeless by the famine. After living like an animal in the Irish bogs and then on the run from a crime of desperation, he lives a half-life in England until he is able to set sail for the promised land- North America.
The story is brutal, but the writing is so poetic and lyrical - you are swept on by its beauty even as you wince as horrors of poverty and the blind faith of immigrants. I look forward to reading more of Behrens' works. THank you for the recommendation, Maureen!
The story is brutal, but the writing is so poetic and lyrical - you are swept on by its beauty even as you wince as horrors of poverty and the blind faith of immigrants. I look forward to reading more of Behrens' works. THank you for the recommendation, Maureen!
March 23, 2011
I thought for a while there that I would really enjoy this book, but after a while I got quite bored. At first I really liked the distant, slightly dreamy, introspective nature of the author's writing, but it quickly got repetitive. This had the potential to be a great book, albeit somewhat cliched - it's about a young boy who loses his entire family during the Irish Famine and ends up in Canada, via an Irish workhouse, an almost stint as a male prostitute in Liverpool, a railroad navvy in Wales and a rough passage across the Atlantic in a coffin ship - but it ended up as a merely average.
April 11, 2008
This book is a great beauty and a total immersion in its time and places. I've bought it for half a dozen people since I read it.
January 23, 2009
Incredible journey from boyhood and a patch of land in Ireland, to manhood and the new world, and the places and people in between.
March 9, 2025
Un roman très riche en histoire, très vivant et réaliste. Le personnage principal n’est pas très sympathique et incarné, mais j’ai beaucoup aimé.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Beaucoup aimé
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Beaucoup aimé
June 4, 2020
I really loved this book! It is beautifully written and I couldn't put it down. Testimony to the hardship of life... and the power of the human spirit to survive.
January 22, 2012
The Law of Dreams is a reason we read.
This was a beautiful book. It describes how a young tenant farmer named Fergus travels across Ireland, struggles to find work in England, and finally takes a ship to America. He experiences very different harsh, real lives, from a group of children turned bandits in order to survive to the ragged, quick-blooded workers building a railroad by cutting through raw earth.
Fergus doesn’t just encounter things. He breathes people. He wades through his surroundings. He feels.
The narration is very lyrical. Peter Behrens has a great rhythm for interspersing Fergus’s tale with potent but realistic observations. The insights do not seem forced or draw you out of the story. I kept forgetting that Fergus was a teenager, because he had a keen sense of what’s going on without seeming omniscient or presentation. Occasionally the pace got slow or choppy (the ride across the Atlantic was a little tedious), but overall it was easy to keep coming back and diving right in.
If you like historical books, this is also a good find. I knew about the Irish potato famine, but the details here are superb. Behrens really gives a sense of what it was like to live at that time and the interaction between classes and countries. He showed what those who had nothing to their name would do to survive. And through Fergus, he showed what they would do to live.
A wonderful read. Highly recommended.
This was a beautiful book. It describes how a young tenant farmer named Fergus travels across Ireland, struggles to find work in England, and finally takes a ship to America. He experiences very different harsh, real lives, from a group of children turned bandits in order to survive to the ragged, quick-blooded workers building a railroad by cutting through raw earth.
Fergus doesn’t just encounter things. He breathes people. He wades through his surroundings. He feels.
The narration is very lyrical. Peter Behrens has a great rhythm for interspersing Fergus’s tale with potent but realistic observations. The insights do not seem forced or draw you out of the story. I kept forgetting that Fergus was a teenager, because he had a keen sense of what’s going on without seeming omniscient or presentation. Occasionally the pace got slow or choppy (the ride across the Atlantic was a little tedious), but overall it was easy to keep coming back and diving right in.
If you like historical books, this is also a good find. I knew about the Irish potato famine, but the details here are superb. Behrens really gives a sense of what it was like to live at that time and the interaction between classes and countries. He showed what those who had nothing to their name would do to survive. And through Fergus, he showed what they would do to live.
A wonderful read. Highly recommended.
July 18, 2012
This book is a gritty and realistic story of what happened to many poor Irish tenants during the Great Famine in mid-18th century Ireland. Young Fergus O'Brien is turned out from the only home he'd ever known when his tenant-family is brutally burned in their beds by the landlord. Fergus is exposed to hardship beyond his expectations, and violence that he finds shocking but necessary for his own survival. He is betrayed by people he trusts and learns to rely on his wits and his determination as he leaves Ireland for Liverpool, and eventually sails to "America". Which was, in fact, Canada.
I loved the tone of this book. It was not a "hard work beats all" immigrant story, like so many we are exposed to hear in Canada. There was no romanticism to this tale at all. It was stark and brittle and determined, with heartbreak and fear thrown in for good measure. Fergus learns who to trust, and more importantly, who not to trust. But what I loved about Fergus was that while he wasn't immune to acts of violence for survival purposes, he still kept his deep moral compass and used that compass to guide him.
I thought the ending was interesting, in that it closed a plot circle, but it also left open an opportunity for a sequel. I look forward to Behrens next novel "The O'Briens".
I loved the tone of this book. It was not a "hard work beats all" immigrant story, like so many we are exposed to hear in Canada. There was no romanticism to this tale at all. It was stark and brittle and determined, with heartbreak and fear thrown in for good measure. Fergus learns who to trust, and more importantly, who not to trust. But what I loved about Fergus was that while he wasn't immune to acts of violence for survival purposes, he still kept his deep moral compass and used that compass to guide him.
I thought the ending was interesting, in that it closed a plot circle, but it also left open an opportunity for a sequel. I look forward to Behrens next novel "The O'Briens".
January 2, 2014
I really love it when a book gets my reading mojo going again (is that even a phrase? Looks like I just made it one) after a time away from the printed page, and The Law of Dreams totally did that. I breezed through this in about 24 hours (would that we could have nice breaks from work every season) and didn't want it to end.
One of the best things about this book was that I opened it with low expectations and was more than pleasantly surprised with how much I liked it. Mind you, I was also surprised at how into it I was given that it's basically a visceral, tragic, heart-wrenching Irish immigrant tale. Of course I know the Great Famine sent many of my predecessors over to the U.S., but for some reason I didn't internalize quite how gory it was for so many.
Read this! And thank you to Bev Woodcock for the solid recommendation.
One of the best things about this book was that I opened it with low expectations and was more than pleasantly surprised with how much I liked it. Mind you, I was also surprised at how into it I was given that it's basically a visceral, tragic, heart-wrenching Irish immigrant tale. Of course I know the Great Famine sent many of my predecessors over to the U.S., but for some reason I didn't internalize quite how gory it was for so many.
Read this! And thank you to Bev Woodcock for the solid recommendation.
May 31, 2015
This is a magnificant novel, vividly imagined, superbly executed. The story of Fergus O'Brien fleeing famine-ridden 1840s Ireland after losing his family to fever is one you will not soon forget. Behrens does not hold anything back. The horrors of a world that shows its inhabitants no mercy, the fears of people looking death in the eye, the crimes that good people must commit just to get through another day are there on every page. Fergus is a survivor. His strength comes from never regarding himself as a victim. The Law of Dreams won the Governor General's Award in 2006, and deserves that and all the other honours that came its way.
August 12, 2009
I don't know if I can even articulate how this book affected me. If you appreciate poetic, poignant and haunting prose, go read this right now. If you like historical novels that are able to balance true storytelling with complex, human/falliable characters, go read this. The book takes place during the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, but it is really about searching, betrayal, risk and courage. I found the writing to beautiful at times that I had to stop and just ponder a sentence. I don't totally know why - but I was just so moved by this work..
November 12, 2007
I didn't know whether or not I'd like this book when I bought it, but it turned out to be really good! It tells the story of a teenage boy living in Ireland during the famine of 1847. The author does a wonderful job of capturing the human experience during traumatic times, and really cuts to the heart of what it means to survive, and what it is that keeps you going. The story seems to be very authentic from a historical perspective, and is very well written.
December 26, 2007
This book was intersting, captivating, and historically interesting. An easy yet informative read, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about 19th century immigration to the United States, particularly from the perspective of the Irish who had survived the potato famine. As a warning, this book can be heavy. Not exactly a happy read, it was still redeeming in content and worth the time.
February 4, 2015
A tender account of the inner and outer journey of Fergus O'Brien, who in 1846 flees starvation in Ireland, searching for love and a way to sustain his life. Behrens' unusual rhythm and word choice weave history, vivid settings, and characters' emotions together seamlessly. When I was finished, I felt like I had had a glimpse of what my Irish ancestors may have experienced on their immigration to Canada in the 1830s.
January 9, 2009
This was difficult at first, to read. More like one of those books that English teachers love. Full of language and angst. However, I'm glad I stuck with it, what a good find! An un-named Irish boy travels from Ireland to England to Wales and on, witnessing pain and suffering in a way that hasn't been written before. His breif moments of pleasure are almost too far apart, but not quite.
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