Fever Dream

A Novel

By: Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell - translator

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Now a feature film coming soon to Netflix.

Experience the blazing, surreal sensation of a fever dream...

A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.

©2017 Samanta Schweblin (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize!

"Genius." (Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker)

"Samanta Schweblin’s electric story reads like a Fever Dream.” (Vanity Fair)

Apt title for this book

This book was wild. A lot of moving pieces the requires your full attention. Wonder how this would look printed.

I have no idea what this was about

This book received an excellent review on npr but unfortunately I missed something. it's a little hard to follow and I didn't love the narrator.

very bizarre, but very captivating

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, I'm not sure I can even tell someone else what they should expect after I've read it, but I did enjoy it. if you're looking for a bit of weird, this is a good short read!

the story was a little confusing at first, but once I got my bearings, it really pulled me in. it was quite disorienting, which I believe is one of the reasons it was written the way it was.

it was easy to differentiate between characters - Huber did a nice job with the voices.

Er,What?

Ups and downs and discomfort and it was a fever dream to read. Not a bad narrator but it was tough to listen with a lot of repetitive lines and nowhere plot. Perhaps it was the translation. I don't think it was trash by any means but I can't say I enjoyed it.

An amazing book

I think I enjoyed the book for all the reasons that other reviewers didn’t. It resists resolution, it perturbs and frustrates, and allows the reader to bask in uncertainty even as it articulates a very clear message about environmental disasters and their very particular and personal impacts. The translation is very good, I’ve read the book in both Spanish and English and the narrator does a great job of conveying the narrative.

Fever Dreams is confusing because it’s a fever dream.

I liked the book, but just be prepared that you start in the middle of the story and it ends abruptly. It can be confusing and frustrating in parts but that’s by design. It definitely doesn’t deserve these one star reviews I’m seeing. For those left wanting more google Argentina+(the cause of the sickness). If helped me understand what was going on a little more.

Ghastly tale, brilliantly told.

Oh my, did I love this. Fever Dream is a work in translation—by an astoundingly inventive Argentinian writer—and while I prefer its original title (Distancia de Rescate, or “rescue distance”), a fever dream is exactly what it is: delirious, disorienting, dire. The entire novel is a conversation between two people—a woman, Amanda, who is ill in a clinic bed, and an unsettling young boy, David, who urgently whispers in her ear, demanding she recount the events that led her here so they can find the precise moment when things went wrong. As Amanda talks, a series of vivid images—a beautiful woman in a gold bikini, a dead bird in a stream, a three-legged dog—unfold along with a growing sense of horror, while David ruthlessly judges which details are important and which are not. It’s a fascinating concept, expanding the very idea of what a novel can be, and while I also bought the paper version it worked exceptionally well for me in audio. Unlike other reviewers I had no trouble following the voices of the different characters (I loved the throaty elegance of Carla, David’s mother; the children’s voices are deliciously creepy), and hearing them all in my ear enhanced the feeling of being utterly surrounded by dread. Part ticking time bomb, part excavation of the horrors of parenthood (I’m no helicopter mom, but Amanda’s obsession with calculating “rescue distance”—the constantly shifting space separating her and her daughter, which narrows in unfamiliar or dangerous situations—resonated with me instantly), this is an audiobook to consume in one sitting. It sinks its hooks in early on; good luck shaking it loose.

Trippy

It takes a moment to get into, but if you buy into the oddness of the story then I feel like it's a worthwhile listen. Very uneasy and interesting.

Surprised'

Well written, interestingly developed. Not the genre I thought it was, and not one I enjoy very much.

WTF?

This was recommended by Kindle and I have no idea why they even mentioned it. Narration was great; the story read like a combination bad drugs, the Twilight Zone and something out of the theatre of Absurd.