fever dream samanta schweblin sparknotes

And now I have to take care of Nina.” The way Fever Dream is written invests every scene with suspense My grandmother used to tell my mother that, all through her childhood, and my mother would tell me, throughout mine. When David asks Amanda why mothers are constantly trying to “get out in front of anything that could happen”, Amanda’s answer encapsulates the hereditary fear the book originates from and feeds on: “It’s because sooner or later something terrible will happen. As the perceived level of threat increases, the more taut the line grows and the closer together they must be. Early in the book, Amanda talks about “the rescue distance”, the variable safe distance between Amanda and Nina at any one time (the phrase is the original, and better, title of the book in Spanish). The inexorably growing dread about the nature of that exact moment – which involves “worms, something very much like worms, and the exact moment when they touch your body for the first time” – is one of the things that makes Fever Dream nearly impossible to put down. We don’t have much time, and before time runs out we have to find the exact moment.” I’m kneeling at the edge of your bed, in one of the rooms at the emergency clinic. When Amanda doubts whether any of this is happening, or really happened the way she remembers it – a seed Schweblin plants variants of throughout the book – he is quick to get her back on track: “It’s happening, Amanda. “We’re wasting time.” When she asks him, “Why do we have to go so quickly, David? Is there so little time left?” he replies, “Very little”. He is also a strict editor: “None of this is important,” he chides her at one point.

David’s disembodied voice is chorus, prompt and guide, increasing the dreadful menace that builds as Amanda tells her story. Fever Dream is cleverly structured as a dialogue between Amanda, who cannot see and is apparently lying in a hospital bed, and the eerily precocious David, who implacably urges Amanda on towards a confrontation with the unknown but apparently terrible event that has brought her here.

Fever dream samanta schweblin sparknotes