The boundaries between appearance and reality are blurred to The Dreaming Girl, a traveler who has a brief affair with a man known only as the German. In this short novel, her imagined world becomes as real as the jungles of Belize where, in her fantasies, she denies the otherness of the German. With extraordinary simplicity, and in an incantatory tone, Roberta Allen lays bare the illusions we live by when we deny the irreducible other.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
For some middle-class Westerners, traveling to exotic places can be a kind of release from everyday life and its attachments, a space out of real time to dream and act impulsively. Allen (Amazon Dream; The Daughter) captures this state well in her slight, poetic novel, in which the reader enters the consciousness of an unnamed girl traveling in Belize. The girl falls in love with a man she calls only "the German," and despite some resistance on his part, follows him from rain forest to town and back again. The dream state is conjured by Allen's almost incantatory prose style: a progression of short paragraphs, each one composed of similar short, simple sentences, most expressing the girl's feelings about her companion, their lovemaking or the jungle around them: "The girl sees a blackness before her eyes. In that blackness, she can just make out a jungle. She is alone in that jungle. She doesn't want to be alone. She looks for him. But she can't find him even though she feels his body next to hers." Allen only briefly enters the mind of the German, who has a girlfriend at home and wants to travel alone. She provides just enough concrete details about the actual landscape and people to keep the reader involved. Minor but pleasing, this dreamy prose poem may interest readers of minimalists like Gordon Lish and Lydia Davis, though Allen's work is more sentimental and less rigorous. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“The Dreaming Girl succeeds as a portrait of sexual longing and...the merciless insignificance of our species.” -- Ken Foster, The Village Voice
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More About the Author
A native New Yorker, artist/author Roberta Allen left home to live in Europe at age 20. For decades, she travelled alone to such places as the Peruvian Amazon, Indonesia, and Central America. Her travels inspired her story collections. Her art is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum. She taught creative writing at The New School (1992-2010), and has taught in the Writing Program at Columbia University. In 1991, she started private writing workshops in NYC: 2011 marks the 20th anniversary. She also coaches writers nationwide by email and phone. Visit her website: www.robertaallen.com
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and Unique,
By Lisa (NYC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dreaming Girl (Paperback)
Roberta Allen's poetic narrative draws the reader into the dream that is fiction. With vivid, terse descriptions, she takes us to Belize and into the brief affair between two travelers (referred to as the girl and the German). For example, about the German in the beginning of the affair, Ms. Allen writes: "When he looks at her, he thinks of a necklace breaking. He thinks of beads spilling, rolling, scattering in all directions. He tries to gather her together with his eyes." And about the girl, Ms. Allen writes: "She feels as though she knows him, but she only knows her dream. If she didn't have her dream of the German, she would lose herself: she would be like water in his hands." As the affair unfolds, Ms. Allen explores the boundaries not only between these two travelers, but also the boundaries between individuals, those between people and nature, and those between reality and illusion. How do we and can we transcend the solitary being that we all are? The Dreaming Girl is beautiful, unique, and in its quietness, powerful.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A dream come true...,
By Dana Shavit (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dreaming Girl (Paperback)
This novel is no less than an evolution of the "novel form". There is not one word on the page that is superfluous. Ms Allen's <The Dreaming Girl> is concise; deeply provocative, probing and highly satisfying. This novel explores and transgresses the boundaries between lust and love, the body and memory, fantasy and reality. A girl of twenty-one meets a German man while traveling in Belize. Together and apart, their bodies, minds, and memories confront the jungle of life that surrounds them. Ms Allen's narrative is deeply hypnotic; this is a journey that as a reader you will not forget.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rich and evocative,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Dreaming Girl (Paperback)
This unusual book, written in a minimalist style, conveys broad themes, emotions and imagery and succeeds in inducing a kind of pleasant reverie in the reader. While not for everyone, this books offers a great deal to the reader who is willing to drift with its dream-like and poetic prose. It is highly recommend.
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