In the mind of Ayako, an old woman in exile on a mountain in medieval Japan, nothing is certain, and nothing holds a familiar shape for long. This is a map of a psyche exalted and destroyed by solitude, and on its contorted surface Shinto philosophy, Greek mathematics, Hawaiian goddesses, Egyptian legend, quantum physics, and Babylonian myth meet and merge... In Catherynne M. Valente's second novel since the critically acclaimed The Labyrinth, language and myth construct a strange new geography of the self. This is The Book of Dreams: open it and walk the shadowy paths of this extraordinary landscape.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Apparently set in medieval Japan, Valente's second novel, an allegorical fantasy whose dreamlike threads reach into Shinto and Western myth, mathematics and physics, is more accessible than her poetically surreal debut, The Labyrinth (2004), which centered on the Greek myth of the Minotaur. Now an old woman, Ayako as a child escaped the destruction of her village and found solitary refuge on a nearby mountain. Her only contact with humanity comes, years later, when the village is reinhabited. Believing her to be a ghost, the villagers seek to appease her with annual offerings of rice and tea. The minimal story line follows Ayako as she slowly advances up five levels of a pagoda and discovers a book of dreams. Nothing is certain—Ayako may be a goddess or a dream or a leonine monster—but, by the end, much wisdom has been learned. Those who admire literary craft and rich language will most appreciate this sublime tale. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Yume No Hon, or, in English, The Book of Dreams, is the story of a woman, Ayako, who lives alone on a mountain. Her only visitors are village boys, who bring gifts of tea and think she is a spirit. She doesn't often try to talk to them, for spirits aren't supposed to ask questions. She wanders through dreams and myths, receiving lessons from the mountain and the river, climbing through successive levels of a pagoda as the seasons change, aging through the seasons of many years, and learning from all she observes. Yume No Hon is also about the burning of Troy, the riddles of the Sphinx, the creation of the world, and other dream stories drawn from myths. Ayako is the center of a legend of woman, and her dream people are goddesses of many traditions. Yume No Hon is an internal landscape painted with thoroughly poetic turns of phrase and a slim volume that packs a great deal of punch in its fleetingly short chapters. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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More About the Author
Catherynne M. Valente is an author, poet, and sometime critic who has been known to write as many as six impossible things before breakfast. She is to blame for over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including The Orphan's Tales, Palimpsest, Deathless, and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She has won the Tiptree Award, the Andre Norton Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Lambda Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award for best web fiction. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, an enormous cat, and a slightly less enormous accordion.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow.,
By
This review is from: Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams (Hardcover)
Catherynne M. Valente, Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams (Prime, 2005)
Sometimes I feel as if I should have a "five-and-a-half star" ranking. I've given a lot of books five stars in the past couple of years-- more five-star reviews than I'd given out in the decade before, almost. (Blame my getting a library card again, and thus not being limited to my own books.) But there are some books that transcend even the five-star rating, that are not only outstanding works of art, but that are so beautifully written that they deserve a place on the short shelf of sacred literature. The benchmark, for me, of this trait has long been Wendy Walker's The Secret Service, the book I consider the most beautifully written and constructed book I've ever read. Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams is the first book I've come across since reading The Secret Service that rises to the same level. Throw away your conceptions of what a novel is before cracking the cover on this one. All the stuff you got taught in English class, chuck it out the window. Yume No Hon is character study in its purest form. The problem is, you've got an autobiography from the most unreliable of narrators (cf. Lauren Slater's Excellent Lying, to which this bears a passing resemblance more than once, were our main character epileptic and living in America); every time you think you've got an answer as to Ayako's real nature, you're likely to turn around and find yourself with many more questions. It's the mimetics of creative nonfiction, but turned around and attached to fiction; is Ayako dying and delirious, or possessed by powerful spirits? Is she ghost, hermit, memory, God? Ultimately, the answers to the questions don't matter (though the very end of the book does offer the reader a chance to resolve them); the journey, rather than the destination, is the point here. And what a journey it is. Valente's language is lush, rich, precise, every word slotted into place with painstaking care. While reading this, I found myself with a constant sense of overwhelming rightness in word choice ("rightness" here as opposed to "suitability;" a Dennis Lehane or George R. R. Martin novel contains suitable language, but the sentences could be phrased in many ways and still get the point across; the right language is that place where you think that there really is no better way to phrase something). The book is rich with striking, original metaphors and turns of phrase that will have the lover of beautiful language scrambling for a notebook to copy it all down. Buy two, actually; you may end up filling one completely before you're done. While the one negative effect of all this is to highlight the book's few typos (and, comparatively, there are very few; if memory serves, I found five, and two of them were arguable), this is one of those exceptionally rare pieces of work where stumbling upon a typo became something forgivable. Yume No Hon belongs with Walker's The Secret Service, McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Koja's Strange Angels, and a handful of other novels on the short shelf of sacred literature-- the first stuff you save when your apartment catches fire. It is a small jewel, to be read, pondered, re-read, and (for novelists) aspired to. Find a copy. Read it. *****
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dreams of the Book,
By
This review is from: Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams (Hardcover)
I found this book at the library after hearing about the author. I was curious and read it on a rather hectic trip.
My initial reaction was mixed...but as the story mellowed in my brain and invaded my dreams, I knew I had stumbled upon something more than a cunningly written piece of poetic fiction. Catherynne M. Valente cleverly weaves several elements of myth from around the world into the five tiered pagoda in the book of dreams. I could not begin to give the twisting turning plot justice by trying to describe it here. It would be like trying to capture the chattering and singing of a brook as it winds through the woods. Suffice to say, you would be well served to dive into this world of spirits and myths where the silk moths weave slick, black, gloss....
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delicious Language.,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams (Hardcover)
I've been aching to write a review for this book since I finished it a couple of weeks ago. But where does one find the words for such an inspiring and intoxicating work?
Read this book for a love of language. Read this book to be immersed in the voice of solitude. Read this book to lose yourself for much too short a time. To be honest, I read this wonderful book in a few days and promptly reread it immediately after, which is not something I often do. Valente paints with such vibrant language that I could taste the weak tea, the river and the dust. I plan on reading this treasure again, very soon, and will continue to do so whenever I need such a friend.
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