Book Review: The Dreaming Place
The Dreaming Place by Charles de Lint
I was quite surprised to pick up a Charles de Lint book and find it a typical teen fiction novel. Okay, so it wasn't really typical--but it definitely had that vibe, at least in the beginning. I've noticed that a lot of teen fiction, especially from the '80s and early '90s, has a similar feel to it--it's always Normal Kids facing Big Issues that their Parents Don't Understand. I think it's a combination of that and cultural references that I don't get since I probably wasn't born when they were written. The Dreaming Place has all of these. The protagonists are Nina, a Normal Girl, and Ash, a Normal Punk Girl. After Ash's mother dies and her father leaves, Nina's parents--her aunt and uncle--take her in. Apparently this happened three years after the novel starts, though it feels like a recent change. Nina is having scary dreams in which she's trapped in the bodies of different animals, and blames them on Ash. Ash hates Nina because she's Normal and Boring. There's magic, a few characters recognizable from de Lint's other books, and heartwarming transformations for both girls. Not de Lint's best work, but worth the 134 little pages.
I was quite surprised to pick up a Charles de Lint book and find it a typical teen fiction novel. Okay, so it wasn't really typical--but it definitely had that vibe, at least in the beginning. I've noticed that a lot of teen fiction, especially from the '80s and early '90s, has a similar feel to it--it's always Normal Kids facing Big Issues that their Parents Don't Understand. I think it's a combination of that and cultural references that I don't get since I probably wasn't born when they were written. The Dreaming Place has all of these. The protagonists are Nina, a Normal Girl, and Ash, a Normal Punk Girl. After Ash's mother dies and her father leaves, Nina's parents--her aunt and uncle--take her in. Apparently this happened three years after the novel starts, though it feels like a recent change. Nina is having scary dreams in which she's trapped in the bodies of different animals, and blames them on Ash. Ash hates Nina because she's Normal and Boring. There's magic, a few characters recognizable from de Lint's other books, and heartwarming transformations for both girls. Not de Lint's best work, but worth the 134 little pages.
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