Customer Reviews

Dreaming: Hard Luck And Good Times In America

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book left me with that feeling that you get after a long ride on a bike - wrung out and exhausted, but glad I went. Carolyn See holds nothing back, and this is at times a harrowing story. But it's ultimately about redemption, and of walking through fire and coming out the other side a better person. It's also beautifully written, with a style that is unpretentious and effortless. If you grew up in a "perfect" family, or even one that's relatively functional (bad pun - sorry!), you probably won't appreciate this book. If you grew up with alcoholics and divorce and police coming to the door and living out of cars, and like that, then you'll recognize a lot of the people in this book. I loved this book for Carolyn See's honesty, and also for her wit; she is a joy to read, and I would recommend this book to anyone (except maybe the Cleavers). Enjoy!!

As an undergraduate, I had the immense pleasure of taking two of Professor See's literature courses. I was so excited to find out that she had written a memoir, because I was also taking a women's autobiography course at the time and couldn't wait to see how her unique personality would come across on paper. Dreaming is a wonderful, sad, and hilarious book. Despite her experiences, she never gets bogged down in feeling sorry for herself or preaching to the reader. It's like she is telling you this story as a confidant without feeling the need to explain the obvious or excuse herself. I loved every minute of it, and I could completely relate to her affectionate disdain for Victorville (I come from Rosamond---an even worse desert town not that far away). I soon passed it on to my mother and older sister, and they thanked me for telling them about this book and Ms. See's other novels, especially Golden Days. I treasure this book and will always feel so grateful for having the chance to meet this amazing author and be in her classes.

At times, this book left me stunned. This is a well written autobiographical account of the author's life, but also, in many respects a social history of a section of post WWII Los Angeles. See takes her own life and places it within the broader context of the history of California and America. I am sure that her experiences are common, but this seems like a device to lessen the shame and sting of coming from a poor, dysfunctional background.

Although See attained career success, the book is organized around her personal relationships and at times you just wonder how she survived emotionally.

What also struck me were the educational and economic opportunities available to poor white people in Los Angeles back then. But See doesn't seem to acknowledge that there was a social structure in place to make sure that she had opportunity so that her hard work would pay off.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it.

As a recent graduate of UCLA I have had the pleasure of taking two of Carolyn See's creative writing courses. She is such a warm & funny lady, one with such a charming disposition and wonderful attitude towards life in general that you would never guess the kinds of hardships she has endured. Her work is fascinating, and Dreaming is a prime example of how fine and realistic a writer she is. I'd recommend this book and all other works by Carolyn because she is truly remarkable with her pen, coming through with a very powerful storytelling voice.

I loved this book; it tells tragic stories so initimately. The author feels so human, loving the people she so much wants to hate, but forgiving them over and over again.

I would love to read about what has happened to the characters in this book since it was written. Great visual references; connecting faces with names makes me feel as if I know this family.

A very good read.

As an English professor who has had to read many, many books, I can honestly say that no book has touched me in the way that Dreaming has. It is, undoubtedly, my all-time favorite book. See writes in a deceptively simple style; colloquial, humorous, and forthright, she is never precious or self-congratulatory. This book not only depicts Caroline's rise out of poverty and misery to become a successful writer and happy human being, but it also offers a philosophy of life that chooses and fights for love, fun, and happiness. The first time I read this book, I read it straight through without stopping. Since that day seven years ago, I have re-read the book several times. Sometimes, when I'm feeling sad, I'll just open it up to a random page and read a bit and I'll end up feeling better. Could you ever ask more of a book?

The author's resilience, capacity for love, life, and forgiveness, wring at my heart. After reading this book I feel she is an amazing woman, and this is a gripping story.

I chose this book after reading See's daughter's biographical saga On Gold Mountain. I find this compelling material (California in the 50s and 60s, alcoholism and family systems from the inside) but the delivery seems somewhat unformed to me - sort of a "this happened, and then this happened" mentality - less artful than I had hoped. I also hoped for more clarity by the end of the book than the beginning - not necessarily resolution, but a sense of evolution on her part. She's still drinking, still glorifying what poses as "the wild life" of the alcoholic (and this book is certainly evidence that the life of the alcoholic is anything but edgy and wild - it comes across as boring!) I felt compassion for these characters - especially her children - but finally was unsatisfied with her rather shallow insights about own life.

If my wife read this book, she would probably exclaim, "This is an AWful book!" And then tell me I have to read it. Because she wouldn't really mean it's "awful." She would mean that all this stuff that happens in Carolyn See's family memoir is pretty mind-bogglingly horrible - all that drinking and drugging and serial marriages and divorces and downright meanness that has gone on in See's family for 3-4 generations now. And I would have to agree. Because sometimes people really do treat those who should mean the most to them - the ones they should LOVE - in vile and unspeakable ways. I was reminded of another memoir I read not too long ago, about a childhood in England and Canada, called Once in a House on Fire, by Andrea Ashworth. I've known about Carolyn See, as an author, for forty years or more now, but I never dreamed she'd lived such an up-and-down kind of life, with an alcoholic, crazy (yeah, I think she really WAS!), abusive mother and an alcoholic father who left when See was a kid, and married a few more times, as did both of See's own husbands. I mean there was this awful pattern of familial quirkiness and general unhappiness throughout much of Carolyn See's life. And yet she somehow managed to rise above all of it (well, SOME of the time), and even got through grad school and became a rather respected writer - something her mother never acknowledged, and even continued to publicly embarrass See on occasion with an inherent nastiness and rudeness, usually fueled by intoxication.

While the story that's told here really is pretty awful, the writing is excellent, and I began to see early in the narrative that it was undoubtedly Carolyn See's odd sense of humor that probably kept her sane and able to shake off some of the worst of the bad times she endured - humor and several years of therapy, that is. The book's been around for over fifteen years now, so I'm kinda curious what's happened to her since. Maybe she'll write another memoir. Or maybe I'll have to scrounge up one of her several novels, because she is a damn fine writer. If you want to read a good book about a mostly AWFUL family life, then try this one, DREAMING. You'll close this book and keep thinking about it for a while, thinking, "How AWful!" - Tim Bazzett, author of PINHEAD: A LOVE STORY

I can't say that at the end of this book I wanted to turn back to the beginning and start all over again. I'm not that strong! I'd need to regroup before I could have a second go at this stunning, sometimes cheerful account of alcoholics, bad parents, drug addicts, lost souls and those who eventually find themselves. What I wanted, instead of starting again from the beginning, was for the book to go on without stop. I could easily have read another 340 pages, another thousand pages. I was stretched out on the mat, knocked silly---but all I wanted was more of the book.

The drinking! We've all seen it, or some of it. It has torn through my own family---my mother at least---and I watch too many friends these days use alcohol to smother or drub their feelings. At the same time, there's a lively side to the act. "Drinking," See writes, "meant a chance to turn over the rocks of daily life and see the crawly stuff underneath." And I always want to see that crawly stuff.

And who could resist Carolyn See's language? Of her parents she writes, "The people who'd heard about Freud by then were not people Kate and George hung out with. Kate and George were starlings getting sucked into the jet engine of life."

She writes, "The second most boring thing in the world after people bending your ear about dreams is people bending your ear about their acid trips. Nevertheless!" And she goes on to describe her first acid trip, and of course it isn't boring at all, because Carolyn See does not write a boring paragraph.

She also has a family history that is, frankly, ideal for a memoir. We don't want to read about sturdy and prosperous families, we want to read about emotional and social disasters. (Statistically, from the memoirs that sell, I think this is the inescapable conclusion---and it's certainly true for me.) It's hard to compete with the twenty-page chapter about the author's sister, titled "Finding Rose," with its breathless streak of drink, drugs, crime and general debauchery. Underlain, in that strange way of families, with love.

Wonderful, too, how See lets go of normal chronology. The book reads more like the mind works, or how a conversation flows, weaving around, doubling back to topics already covered, exploring them in a different light.

All in all, completely irresistible.