Variations on a Dream
A Novel
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Variations on a Dream
Narrated by:
Megan Miles, Tara Samuel, Benjamin Blais, Ellora Patnaik, Fiona Green
Buy for $19.80
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Narrated by:
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Megan Miles
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Tara Samuel
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Benjamin Blais
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Ellora Patnaik
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Fiona Green
After years of shouldering the childcare and housework, trying to keep her creative life and career alive, and managing her husband’s existential anxieties, the once whimsical Sarah is too burned out to dream. Most days, all she can muster is an imaginary, picture-perfect version of her husband Trevor. Meanwhile, Trevor is caught in a downward spiral of his own: strangled by fear of artistic mediocrity, and lonely and disconnected from his family, he fantasizes about the early college days when his romance with Sarah still thrilled with expansive, seductive possibility.
When both Sarah and Trevor secretly stumble on an auteur porn film based on the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne, they are immediately sucked into a dizzying maze of obsession, betrayal, possession, and duplicate selves echoing backwards in time. As the lines between fantasy, reality, and dream become increasingly blurred, a brilliant, alluring new student arrives in Trevor's university class—threatening to collapse the walls of their mythology forever.
With startling psychological insight, a sly sense of humour, and all the peculiar twists of a fairytale, Variations on a Dream is a fearless exploration of how far we will go to save what we once believed to be a dream come true.
Critic reviews
"An extraordinary work—inventive, eclectic, heartfelt, playful, angry, often brilliantly written, mingling myth and actuality, with characters waking from various ‘dreams’ into various realities. . . . Variations makes imaginative use of several narrative levels and registers, concocting a delightful mélange. Levels: main narrative, flashback, myth, dreams, fantasies, ruminations, unexplained fragments, letters, emails, stories written by the characters, sometimes about another character. Registers: neutral, analytical, contemplative, poetic, visionary, demotic, earthy. A strange and heady mix. . . . innovative and compelling."
—Harvey De Roo, The British Columbia Review
"Variations on a Dream is shifting, kaleidoscopic, and prismatic—nothing is as it seems, emotions are characters, and identity is porous. At its core, this gorgeous novel is about a marriage falling apart, a seemingly mundane topic, but Angélique Lalonde treats it with rarely seen creativity and care, revealing in the process that even the most intimate of fractures deserves the most extravagant of literary finesse. This book will stay with me forever."
—Jen Sookfong Lee, author of The Hunger We Pass Down
"A dark and delicious fable about marriage, sex, power, and becoming lost in a labyrinth of desire. Variations on a Dream is intoxicating, and very funny."
—Elizabeth Renzetti, author of What She Said
"I love Angélique’s mind. You never know where she is going to go and what she is going to think of next. Here, she takes on the subjects of marriage, loss of identity, and growing away from youthful exuberance into something hopefully wiser—making this seemingly normal transition appear somehow mythological, maybe even magickal. Variations on a Dream is at once familiar and full of surprises. In scenes polished until they shine brightly, this story is at times hysterical, and brimming with both whimsical and sensual delights."
—katherena vermette, author of real ones
—Harvey De Roo, The British Columbia Review
"Variations on a Dream is shifting, kaleidoscopic, and prismatic—nothing is as it seems, emotions are characters, and identity is porous. At its core, this gorgeous novel is about a marriage falling apart, a seemingly mundane topic, but Angélique Lalonde treats it with rarely seen creativity and care, revealing in the process that even the most intimate of fractures deserves the most extravagant of literary finesse. This book will stay with me forever."
—Jen Sookfong Lee, author of The Hunger We Pass Down
"A dark and delicious fable about marriage, sex, power, and becoming lost in a labyrinth of desire. Variations on a Dream is intoxicating, and very funny."
—Elizabeth Renzetti, author of What She Said
"I love Angélique’s mind. You never know where she is going to go and what she is going to think of next. Here, she takes on the subjects of marriage, loss of identity, and growing away from youthful exuberance into something hopefully wiser—making this seemingly normal transition appear somehow mythological, maybe even magickal. Variations on a Dream is at once familiar and full of surprises. In scenes polished until they shine brightly, this story is at times hysterical, and brimming with both whimsical and sensual delights."
—katherena vermette, author of real ones
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