The Somnambulist's Dreams
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- Disclaimer-The fact that Lars is one of my friends in Goodreads has nothing to do with my opinion of the book. I was interested in The Somnambulist's Dreams before Lars' invitation. Every opinion and comment is entirely my own.*
''There was no denying it was lonesome.''
Few situations in life are lonelier than living in a lighthouse. How quiet it must be when the only thing you hear is the sound of the waves. How dark and frightening when a storm is raging and the human being is but an insignificant dot amidst the fighting elements. All these constitute the perfect environment for the birth of dreams, visions and hallucinations.
The current lighthouse keeper on the coast of New England finds a collection of his predecessor's disjointed, weird writings. The man, whose name is Enoch Soule, claims to be a somnambulist, one who engages in sleepwalking (‘‘somnia'' means ‘‘dreams'' in Latin) and Enoch states that these writings are the dreams he's having night after night. The letters are addressed to his wife. This is the premise of this highly unusual and fascinating book.
There are so many questions that arise from the first pages of the novel. Are Enoch's dream actual dreams or are they hallucinations? And, taking it to the extreme, is he shape-shifting or even teleporting? Hard to make any assumptions and that is what I really enjoyed in Lars' book. There are symbols and cryptic elements that force your mind to work in great speed as you read to try and uncover anything similar to an answer.
The central symbol is the lighthouse. It rules over absolute darkness, it provides light in the midst of danger upon the troubled waves, it protects sailors by shielding them from certain death. For me, the lighthouse keepers stand there like the guardians of life, of safety and, perhaps, of a different knowledge and perception of the world. Then, comes the raven. The raven is the heart of the story, it provides the major element of magical realism, even surrealism, and acts like a crossover between Poe's Nevermore and Odin's Huginn and Muninn. Thus, the raven keeps all the answers to life and observes everything. Yet, it discloses nothing.
The dreams create striking images as Enoch finds himself in Kenya, in Antarctica, in a cemetery full of Victorian Gothic features, in Space, in a cell, in a well. The story of the Taxidermist is my favourite. It is a haunting, nightmarish vision where the word ‘‘ghosts'' is mentioned for the first time. This dream echoes Poe's dark tales directly.
The language is beautiful, communicating difficult questions in a powerful simplicity, working through dualities. Black and white, Darkness and Light, Death and Life. This antithesis is wonderfully depicted in the striking cover by Kyle Louis Fletcher. The current lighthouse keeper is -in my opinion- the most enigmatic presence in the book. We see Enoch's inner thoughts, strange as they are, but not once do we enter the mind of his successor who counts the silent minutes in his domain, and I found this particularly puzzling and fascinating. Edgar Allan Poe's presence is thoroughly felt during the narration and I also sensed an echo of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco's plays.
This is not an easy book, it won't give you answers, but will cause you to think and transport your mind into an apocalyptic world where nothing is as it seems...
''There is no winning or losing, only the eternal plasticity of the game itself.''