The Dreamers - Gilbert Adair

Oh, how I loved The Dreamers.

I first became aware of the book when the film came out, which I meant to see but never got around to. Then I meant to read the book, and never got around to that either, not least because I kept forgetting Gilbert Adair's name for some reason. Finally, finally, I read it in one sitting just before Christmas.

The Dreamers follows three young people in Paris in 1968 as civil unrest begins to rumble. The Amazon blurb says:

"A tale of sexual obsession set during the Paris street riots in 1968. The Dreamers is about a young American student who comes to Paris in 1968. Obsessed with film, he becomes involved with two fellow cineastes, a brother and sister whose incestuous relationship opens up to include him in their menage. Cocooned in their apartment the three of them push themselves further and further into excess until the violence in the streets invades their lives with violent consequences. "

Which pretty much sums it up. But this short book is written so skillfully that the quickly darkening atmosphere of both the brewing unrest and the increasingly tense and sexual games that the three youths play is dripping from the page. While I am certainly no film buff (the polar opposite in fact) there is a cinematic quality throughout the text, which may be as much to do with the fact that Adair rewrote the 1988 story (originally titled The Holy Innocents) when he was writing the screenplay for the film, as it is to do with Adair's filmy past.

And the sex is only a small part (oh ho! no pun intended! sorry.) in the middle, and while I had a vague fear that it would be completely superfluous - like most sex scenes I tend to think - these didn't seem to be at all. The eroticism between the characters and the violence steadily building literally outside their apartment seem to each become manifestations of the other; in this alternate universe of the trio's own making the riots appear to make perfect sense. To them, and to the reader.

The ending too, seems perfectly fitting, though I'm not going to spoil it for anyone by saying what it is. This is a short, delicious book. Go read.

Comments

[Stewart]

I have The Dreamers earmarked for an upcoming read. Really loving Gilbert Adair at the moment, having now read four of his titles* and, as I've been told, the best is still to come^.

* A Closed Book, Buenas Noches Buenos Aires, The Act Of Roger Murgatroyd, and A Mysterious Affair Of Style.

^Love And Death On Long Island

[Kirsty]

Excellent. I'm definitely going to have to read more of his stuff.