The Dream Room [Hardcover]

Marcel Moring (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2002

Set in the 1960s, The Dream Room is the story of a family's dissolution, as witnessed through the eyes of twelve-year-old David. An only child, he is fascinated by the culinary arts -- making the family's dinner nightly and reading cookbooks as if they were novels and novels as if they were cookbooks -- content to simply spend time with his mother and father, a pilot during World War II who is now an unemployed engineer. One long, rainy summer, they work together building model airplanes for the toy shop beneath their apartment to support themselves -- their only means of survival. But although times are difficult, David is happy, for his family has never been so close and life has never felt so secure. But his peace is shattered by an old family friend, whose appearance will destroy everything David holds most dear and irrevocably alter the course of his life.

Intelligent and philosophical, The Dream Room is at once an entrancing family history, love story, and fairy tale that confirms Marcel Möring's reputation as one of the great literary talents of his generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dutch novelist Moring (In Babylon) has penned a slim, elegant volume about a young boy coming of age in the Netherlands during the 1960s. David Speijir, a 12-year-old with a precocious bent for cooking, lives quietly with his parents. His father is an unemployed engineer and former pilot who builds model airplanes in lieu of available work, and his mother is a nurse. The novel proceeds at a graceful pace, eschewing the exigencies of plot and relying instead on detailed descriptions of home life. Moring slowly reveals the pressures on the Speijirs, writing delicately of buried tensions between the parents and the difficult memories they share of World War II. An old wartime friend of David's father, Humbert Coe, adds a splash of color in one delightful scene, he takes David to a restaurant, where the boy gives the chef a much-needed cooking lesson. The book ostensibly climaxes one stormy night on the Dutch coast, as waves crash against the shore outside the house in which Mrs. Speijir's parents live. Even as all the elements of a classic gothic tale converge, Moring refrains from slipping into cliche, and shades the scene with sensitivity and understatement. A coda, set in the 1990s, provides a fittingly enigmatic conclusion in the form of a strange fairy tale. This deftly woven story, subtly but beautifully written, rewards with its polished, discreet exploration of a family still suffering from the wounds of a conflict acted out on the body and the spirit.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

David Speijer lives with his parents above a doll-repair shop. One day, when he and his unemployed father are talking with the doll doctor, David comes up with an idea. His father can build model planes and sell them to children who want to play with model planes but don't want to build them. His father, a former pilot, takes to the idea, and soon the plane building becomes a family effort. But David's mother is dissatisfied with what she sees as his father's lack of motivation. When Humbert Coe, an old friend of the family and former spy, arrives at the family's doorstep, he encourages David's passion for cooking. Now a food critic, Humbert takes David to a fancy restaurant, where David ends up besting the cook after receiving a less-than-satisfactory dish and agreeing to a friendly competition. But David's idealized world is not as peaceful and comfortable as it seems, and the event that shatters his illusions will haunt him and his choices throughout his life. An atmospheric and moving tale. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (February 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066212405
• ISBN-13: 978-0066212401
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,742,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An enigmatic boyhood, May 25, 2003

By 

Anna Klein - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dream Room (Hardcover)

It's the 1960s. David Speijir, 12 years old, is living at home with his parents in the Netherlands. David's first love is cooking. His father is a former pilot; his mother a nurse. With money tight, the entire family begins assembling model airplanes for sale. While David is aware of the growing tension between his parents, he is powerless to prevent it, powerless to avert the bitterly stormy coastal night when it all comes apart.

THE DREAM ROOM isn't an easy novel to understand. It's hardly more than a hundred pages long and the author, Moring, employs a minimalist style, telling much of the story without using words. The ambiguous ending, set years later in the 1990s, raises as many questions as it answers. I came away from the book uncertain, confused, not sure whether my desire for resolution was simply a failure on my part to understand what Moring had created, or a failure on his part to properly create it. My overall impression is of a coming-of-age story, a tale that uses the enigmatic to highlight how seldom life turns out the way we expect. And perhaps also the story's theme is about our dreams, about the way they affect us without our even knowing it.

Because I didn't fully understand THE DREAM ROOM, I was at a loss to rate it. I finally settled on four stars because the novel was well written enough that I was bothered by the perplexity. Had it been a failure, I would not have given it a second thought.