Dream Children

by A.N. Wilson

A brilliant, reclusive London writer's decision to marry and leave for America startles his completely female household and threatens to expose his relationship with the twelve-year-old daughter of his fiancee's lesbian lover

Genres: Fiction

218 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Andrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views. He is an occasional columnist for the Daily Mail and former columnist for the London Evening Standard, and has been an occasional contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer.

Reviews

[Claire]

Wilson is a skilled writer who has managed to make a living from novels and rightist articles over the years . This is an ascerbic, misogynistic, discomforting book. He peers at his female specimens with cold malice and denies Bobs, any traumatic effects of of her molestation from any early age by the 'genius' protagonist. I finished it with distaste for the characters and their creator.

[Mike Beranek]

This is about a tight ensemble of women and a girl orbiting around a Humbert Humbert type character but without the existential intensity of Nabakov's deviant male. Neither has it the darkest humour of Lolita, however it is not without its charms. I found the attempt at addressing this controversial material rather brave, if not foolhardy one might say, but I think our highly sensitized society needs this kind of fiction as opposed to sticking its head in the sand about it. There is an element of threat and menace at the end, but on the whole I dare say it is deftly light with the morality and spins a good yarn with a number of entertaining twists. Wilson is an accomplished writer and historian and has the calibre to take on this kind of matter and keep it engaging and fairly empathetic. It feels fresh and contemporary and would make a nice little play. If good fiction writing is about inhabiting the heads and hearts of a diversity of characters then this is just that. In fact what would be the point of fiction if it only represented the perfectly honest and above-board? Humans can be much more twisted and compromised in reality. It's what makes life interesting.

[andrew y]

This book was, simply, not well done. It takes an utterly shocking premise, and turns it into drivel with a constantly changing view that is poorly written. There is only one interesting relationship in the book, yet ten or more are contrived and exposited upon for little to no reason.

It was written to shock, which I suppose it succeeds at, but it ends up doing nothing with that feeling. Someone called it a "modern Lolita", which is why I read it, but other than including a pedophilic character, similarities stop there.

Don't read this.

[Marguerite Doran]

Disturbing, intense and addictive.

[sisterimapoet]

[Who knew! - going back through my old book journal, transferring things to here, and I find I had previously read something by Mr Wilson (author of one of the few books I abandoned last year! Winnie and Wolf). I had no recollection of reading anything by him. And little recollection of this book - except I don't think I really enjoyed it!]

[Kellie Schofield]

Not an easy read, but I struggled through. Thought provoking, and a bit disturbing.