The Daydreamer

O încântare, perfectă.

♥︎Purtroppo i libri che contengono più storie non fanno per me, dopo un po' mi stufano.
Ho terminato questo titolo solo perché è molto breve e comunque le storielle non erano scritte male o pesanti.
Lo stile di scrittura è comunque fluido e non difficile, ma sono arrivata alla fine con tanta difficoltà.
Sicuramente chi apprezza più il genere lo apprezzerà di più.♥︎

Watch out! I’m coming down the street on my pogo stick!!

You want me to read a kid’s book? I don’t think so. Give me adult drama, the more messed up and angsty the better. Bad decisions, deceit, despair, sign me up. But I listened to Betsy, whom I thank profusely for letting me in on this secret collection of short stories by one of my favorite authors, Ian McEwan, and for suggesting I read it to the 9-year-old I sit for. I’ve never read anything aloud but picture books, and that was for the captive audience of my little kids, many moons ago. So I had my doubts.

I threw the idea out to the kid, half expecting her not to bite. I got a little nervous when she gave me an excited yes. Gulp. It’s happening. I told her, “Look, here’s the deal. If either of us hate the book, I’ll stop reading. Immediately.” I wanted to make it clear that this was extracurricular, optional. I wasn’t planning on torturing either of us. If she got antsy and started climbing the walls, I wasn’t going to sit there talking to myself. The kid reads a lot—she’s so cute walking around confidently holding the Kindle like she’s a college student—so I gambled that she’d understand and like the book. And she did.

Two pages in, and I was pretty much a goner. OMG is this a good book! Imaginative! Engrossing! Fun! It was strange hearing myself read. I had to try to slow down and speak clearly, things I never have to worry about when I read with my mouth shut. The weird thing is, I wasn’t distracted like I usually am. So if I talk to myself, I have better concentration? At least I know how to pay attention to myself, lol.

I read for an hour and a half straight, without even having to pee, and I saw that I was already halfway through this 200-page book of deliciousness. The kid, who at her age can still multi-task (the lucky dog), began weaving some sort of original pencil holder, and she listened intently, throwing out some good comments as she wove away.

The stories, oh the stories. McEwan is such a master! This is his only kid’s book and he wrote it back in the 1990s. He doesn’t dumb down, hallelujah. There are seven stories, all gems. I even love that they all have simple, two-word titles: The Dolls, The Cat, Vanishing Cream, The Bully, The Burglar, The Baby, and The Grown-Up. They are all about a boy named Peter who is a chronic daydreamer; he fantasizes some far-out situations, with himself as the star. Things are not what they appear to be. He turns things inside out, does some switching of beings, and explores different lives. I don’t want to say one more word about the stories because the surprise is part of the fun. My favorite is probably The Cat. The kid liked The Dolls the best. Not surprising; she’s a 9-year-old girl who knows all about having a room full of dolls.

The book took me back to being a child, the fun of imagining things. I used to have a ball with my imagination, though I’d get in trouble for too much daydreaming. Often I would write instead of read. In middle school we had to pick a book and then present a report on it in front of the class. I didn’t read a book, which horrified me. Miss goody-two-shoes here couldn’t let that be. I wanted an A, so a girl has to do what a girl has to do. I quickly made up a book with some kind of sci-fi plot, with characters who had bald heads. I made up an author name (way fun) and decided she was from England, thinking I was being pretty sly—surely the teacher doesn’t know of authors in a country as far away and exotic as England. Okay, it was my turn, so I proceeded to describe the imaginary book in front of the class. I had everything down on index cards so it looked official--and also so I could remember what I made up. After the report, there was a Q&A. I confidently answered everyone’s questions, making it up as I went along. I remember the teacher asking me about the author, and even though I was slightly terrorized that I’d somehow get busted, it was clear that even at a young age I could wing it. I did get an A, but I felt very guilty—though I admit I was a little smug that I’d pulled it off. I snowed my teacher and I also got to use my imagination, which was chomping at the bit.

But back to this book, which of course I did read (I swear it isn’t imaginary). There were a bunch of firsts for me: first time I read a book aloud, first time I read a book in two sittings, first time I got to share a book, to take it in at the exact same time that someone else is. I was a radio, except I got to listen to me, too.

This book had a profound effect on me. It told my imagination to just skip, baby, skip. It gave me permission to daydream again (and now that I’m retired, I have the time). Childhood memories and story ideas just raced through my head. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that stirred up my imagination so much. Without question, the book went right on to my precious Blew My Mind shelf.

Time to go home. I was totally high on the book. I had to trade my car for a pogo stick and I hopped all the way down the winding Novelty Hill Road. I was just too wired and exhilarated to do anything but bounce.

Check this book out; maybe you’ll have an experience like mine. Each story in this collection takes you someplace exciting, fantastical, comfy, and wise. Get ready.

Ever revisit an old book-friend and find the luster is gone? That is definitely not the case with McEwan's The Daydreamer. Yesterday, after a day which included the euthanasia of an elderly pet, I took the book home for the second time, in hopes of putting the world right again.

This collection of short stories is centered on Peter, a ten-year-old who has an imagination which, at times, can rule him. In school, at home, with his younger sister, petting his cat, thinking about his sister's dolls--all are occasions in which that imagination overcomes him and takes him on amazing adventures. The everyday world falls away and Peter is off sojourning in strange and wonderful places.

Each story has a different flavor. The Dolls is a story that raises the hair on a readers nape; The Grown Up, the closing story, offers a prescient moment in growing up; The Bully explores the mysteries of enmity and friendship.

Yet, within all this variety, all have McEwan's uncanny ability to recreate the truth of the moment in a young boy. His language, his sense of both lavishness and economy are masterful.

So when I read The Cat, my day was quieted by the beauty of his imagination, through the eyes of Peter.

Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Short Stories
Also: 8 1/2 or Better List

I wish I had read this edition with the cat on the cover! McEwan writes spare, playful, and meditative prose in this book for children and for adults meditating on what it means to be a child and what it means to lose childhood but not to lose imagination. Each chapter centers on the relationship between the solitary child and other people and creatures. I like that solitude, perception, and imaginative leaps cause the child to bridge the gap between himself and others. Instead of suspecting that socialization is what makes us acknowledge other beings and other people, McEwan implicitly makes the opposite point, which is that understanding other subjectivities is always an imaginative leap, a speculation, so that the deepening of one's access to fantasy, however superficially isolating it might seem, also deepens the profundity of a connection to others. I'm making this book sound like less fun than it is, but I really loved the way McEwan subtly threaded this theme through each of his chapters. Much as in Atonement, though in a lighter register, he is interested in our accountability to others and our misplaced yet inevitable desire to boss them around (a desire most evident in a child who hasn't learned to dampen that impulse). McEwan also treats our exploration of the counterfactual as a form of access to other consciousnesses to which it might be difficult to cede control or primacy. That access to another consciousness--whether that of a cat, a school bully, or a baby--makes the narcissistic self abate in favor of compassion and wonder. For me, the most powerful two stories were that about the cat (are you surprised?) and the one about going to the seashore in the summer and having that breath-taking and frightening sensation that the timeless feeling of being a child is going to give in (erode?) to the regimented hours of adulthood. McEwan brought back strong sense memories to me of what it was like to play on the beach as a child, and I love that he doesn't just focus on loss but also reminds us of the wonders and adventures that adulthood imparts along with its workaday world doldrums. A simple book with a lot of warmth and philosophical grasp.

Este libro comencé a leerlo porque es obligatorio en la facultad. No conocía ni al autor ni al libro hasta el momento en el que me dieron la lista con las lecturas.

La verdad es que es un buen libro, es interesante como nos hace ponernos en el lugar de un niño que se la pasa viviendo "en las nubes" (de ahí su nombre) y que por este motivo muchas veces se mete en problemas o es poco comprendido por sus pares y adultos. Fue una lectura ligera, con vocabulario sencillo y por eso creo que también esta bueno para los mas jóvenes.

No tiene grandes reflexiones en cada uno de sus cuentos, pero es muy divertido ver las ocurrencias que se imagina. Admito que en uno de ellos lloré y sentí un poco de calidez en mi corazón, pero toca un tema que es delicado para mi, el cual no voy a decir porque estaría spoileando.

Si buscan una lectura ligera, inocente y alocada... ¡Son más que bienvenidxs a las nubes!

خب از خوندن این کتاب خوشحال نیستم. با اینکه حتی مشکلی با خوندن کتابهای نوجوانان ندارم به نظرم سطح این کتاب در حد بچه های ده ساله بود. داستان پسری ده یازده ساله که با خواهر کوچکتر و پدر و مادرش زندگی میکنه و بسیار خیال پردازه و داستانها این خیال پردازی رو با واثعیت مخلوط کرده

Parecem ser histórias para crianças mas se eu fosse criança creio que me fariam pesadelos.
Fica a estrela das desistências...