{"id":166,"date":"2018-06-12T10:59:30","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T09:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?p=166"},"modified":"2018-06-12T10:59:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T09:59:30","slug":"something-terrible-will-happen-samanta-schweblin-fever-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2018\/06\/12\/something-terrible-will-happen-samanta-schweblin-fever-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSomething terrible will happen\u201d: Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Oneworld, 2017)<\/h2>\n

Usually I think that the phrase \u201cI couldn\u2019t put it down\u201d is just a figure of speech, but in the case of Fever Dream<\/em> it sums up my reading experience. I read it in one sitting: it\u2019s disturbing, terrifying, and absolutely mesmerising. Fever Dream <\/em>was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, and was Argentine author Samanta Schweblin\u2019s debut novel (though she has previously published short stories). Published by OneWorld<\/a> in 2017, it epitomises OneWorld\u2019s commitment to seeking out \u201cemotionally engaging stories with strong narratives and distinctive voices\u201d, and Megan MacDowell\u2019s powerful translation sweeps along with an almost hypnotic urgency.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Image taken from https:\/\/oneworld-publications.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Fever Dream <\/em>is a frighteningly real supernatural tale, in which fear and suspense are built up by what we are left to imagine just as much as by what we are shown. The text is made up of a dialogue between a woman lying in a bed in an emergency clinic, and a boy sitting beside her, asking her questions. The boy is insistent that they find out about \u201cthe worms\u201d and \u201cthe exact moment\u201d, and the woman tells a story that is at once meandering, owing to her confusion, and urgent, as she has very little time left. There are only four main characters in this short novel: two mothers and two children. Amanda, the woman lying in the hospital bed, had brought her daughter Nina on holiday from Buenos Aires to the Argentine countryside (a bleak landscape of seemingly endless soy fields), leaving her husband working in Buenos Aires. Nina is a small and adorable child who Amanda needs to protect from something dreadful, the threat of which has been hanging over her not just since the beginning of the narration, but her whole life: \u201cMy mother always said something bad would happen. My mother was sure that sooner or later something bad would happen, and now I can see it with total clarity, I can feel it coming toward us like a tangible fate, irreversible.\u201d This premonition feeds the narrative, and the narrative feeds off it, putting inevitability and presentiment at the forefront of Amanda\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

The third character is Carla, who lives next door to Amanda\u2019s holiday rental cottage. Carla tells Amanda a disturbing and supernatural tale of how at the age of six her angelic son, David, escaped death by poisoned water through a process of \u201ctransmigration\u201d so that his soul is now partly in another body and she is left with a \u201cmonster\u201d in place of her beloved only child. The final character is David himself, now twelve, who is sitting on the hospital bed urging the narrator to tell the story of what happened so that he can pinpoint the exact moment that the \u201cworms\u201d entered her body and changed the course of her life.<\/p>\n

The \u201cfever dream\u201d of the title is recounted by Amanda, in something akin to real time, in that it is told in the present tense, but narrates something that happened in a recent past (David tells her at one point that she has been in the feverish state for two days): \u201cI don\u2019t remember much else, that\u2019s all that is happening.\u201d A feeling of somnambulant terror prevails: the immediacy of the present tense in both the dialogue and the dream suggests that this dream could go anywhere, change at any moment, but that the dreamer has no control over its course. Alongside the recounting of the dream is Amanda\u2019s awareness of the real-life situation she is in: lying in bed in a clinic, wondering where her daughter is, knowing she has very little time left. She is also aware that David is not answering her questions but rather probing her with his own, determined to reach a conclusion that he deems to be essential but which to her is \u201cunhelpful\u201d and \u201cmissing the most important information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid is a terrifying prompter\u2026 mercilessly pushing Amanda on towards an event that will explain why she is lying in a clinic with her life spilling out of her, and which will explain what happened to her child.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

David is the only one who seems to have any control: he decides what is important and what is not, which details can be skipped over and which must be recalled in all their minutiae. David guides Amanda through the labyrinth of her own memory, but at times it seems as though David could change the course of the dream at any moment: \u201cWhat is Nina doing? <\/em>She\u2019s such a pretty girl. What is she doing? <\/em>She walks away a little. Don\u2019t let her walk away<\/em>.\u201d However, when Amanda attempts to take control of the course of the narrative, it all spirals away: David tells her that she is focusing on the wrong things, and we see a sinister echo of the \u201cthing\u201d that happened: while she was looking away, focusing on something else, the \u201cthing\u201d came in.<\/p>\n

Writing for The Guardian<\/em>, Chris Power opines that<\/a> \u201cParadoxically, this is a book only parents will feel the full impact of,\u00a0but that impact is so great you don\u2019t want to recommend it to anyone with young children.\u201d Indeed, I have to admit that this was an uncomfortable read as a mother of young children: the insistence that it is in trying to protect a child from the danger we can see that we fail to notice the real danger taps into my innermost fears (though I think that might be the point), and the constant references to the \u201crescue distance\u201d between mother and child (the importance of the rescue distance is evident in the novel\u2019s original title, \u201cDistancia de rescate\u201d) become a painful refrain that goes from conceptual to physical as the nightmare gallops towards its inevitable conclusion:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do mothers do that?
\n<\/em>What?
\nTry to get out in front of anything that could happen \u2013 the rescue distance.
\n<\/em>It\u2019s because sooner or later something terrible will happen. My grandmother used to tell my mother that, all through her childhood, and my mother would tell me, throughout mine. And now I have to take care of Nina.
\nBut you always miss the important thing.<\/em>
\nWhat is the important thing, David?\u201d<\/p>\n

David sidesteps the question, of course. We keep being reminded (by David) that time (Amanda\u2019s time) is running out, and that some secret must be revealed before her death. Yet David seems to know already what happens: Amanda has repeated her story several times, and sometimes he pre-empts what she is going to remember: \u201cIn a few minutes, Nina will be left alone in the car<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let me be clear: I don\u2019t like horror stories. I\u2019m one of those people who will turn the lights on and check every corner of the house if I\u2019ve read or watched anything remotely frightening. I should have hated Fever Dream<\/em>, but I couldn\u2019t. I couldn\u2019t, because it\u2019s so clever, and so perfectly terrifying. It goes far beyond dystopia, and into the realm of nightmares, yet it all feels so real, so possible, so recognisable from the powerlessness we know from our own nightmares: \u201cI wonder if Nina is following us, but I can\u2019t turn to check or ask the question out loud.\u201d The construction of the book is striking: it\u2019s a dialogue, but really it seems more like a monologue narration with a prompter getting it back on track when lines are forgotten, and telling both Schweblin\u2019s protagonist and her readers what is and isn\u2019t important, what is worth describing in detail and what can be glossed over. David is a terrifying prompter, though, mercilessly pushing Amanda on towards an event that will explain why she is lying in a clinic with her life spilling out of her, and which will explain what happened to her child.<\/p>\n

There are ambiguities in this novel, but they are there deliberately, to destabilise, and to bring you into Amanda\u2019s fever dream where reality and fantasy collide in brutal ways. While my description may make you think that David is an inexorable harbinger of doom, there is also something he is trying to lead Amanda towards, something he wants her to know before the rope that determines the rescue distance is broken. And when you find out what this \u201csomething\u201d is, it will tear down the walls around your heart.<\/p>\n

Fever Dream<\/em> is both a reflection on \u2013 or a warning about \u2013 environmental damage, and a terrifying story of power and pain, loss and love. The relentless landscape of the soy fields and the repeated mentions of \u201cpoison\u201d could make this a dystopian warning about genetic modification, but at the forefront are the entwined stories of two mothers and their love for children they are, ultimately, powerless to protect. It\u2019s terrifying, chilling, haunting \u2013 everything you\u2019d expect a nightmare to be \u2013 but Fever Dream <\/em>is a brilliant book, a wonderful debut, and not to be missed.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Image taken from www.wordswithoutborders.org. Read full interview with Schweblin at https:\/\/www.wordswithoutborders.org\/dispatches\/article\/2017-man-booker-international-prize-qa-samanta-schweblin-eric-m-b-becker<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Oneworld, 2017) Usually I think that the phrase \u201cI couldn\u2019t put it down\u201d is just a figure of speech, but in the case of Fever Dream it sums up my reading experience. I read it in one sitting: it\u2019s disturbing, terrifying, and absolutely mesmerising. Fever Dream was shortlisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[113,343,551,613,707,801,997],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cSomething terrible will happen\u201d: Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream - Translating Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2018\/06\/12\/something-terrible-will-happen-samanta-schweblin-fever-dream\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cSomething terrible will happen\u201d: Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream - Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Oneworld, 2017) Usually I think that the phrase \u201cI couldn\u2019t put it down\u201d is just a figure of speech, but in the case of Fever Dream it sums up my reading experience. 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