Dreamside

Graham Joyce

This is a novel about dreaming, the world between dusk and dawn where we act out our subconscious fears and desires, and specifically lucid dreaming. A group of students are brought together by a psychology professor to do a study into lucid dreaming, a series of exercises designed to gradually improve the subjects control over their dreamlife. It opens decades later, with a group of four scarred individuals finding themselves drawn back together, wondering which of them it was who reawakened the secret from their past. A key sign being their experience of repeaters; dreams where they keep dreaming they are waking up, but have several false starts instead. The novel then shifts between the past and the future, exploring the relationships of these four people and how they change over time. How they grow together through their association in the dream experiments, and then eventually fracture violently apart.

There is a sense of both delight and menace in their gradual explorations of their dream lives, becoming closer and more connected, yet at the same time pulling further apart. A perfect example of dysfunctional relationships, played out against a strange background. Joyce builds an excellent sense of tension throughout the novel, building to the nebulous events that are both in the past and the future, depending on the current thread of the story.

Dreamside isn't as compelling as his wonderful novel The Tooth Fairy, but it is a satisfying read, if a little subdued. There is an excellent character dynamic, and you never quite know where it is going next as the author manages to keep his cards tight to his chest. You could imagine almost anything happening, so it keeps you reading just to find out what will.