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In the preface to The Daydreamer Ian McEwan asks if we adults really mean it when we say we like children’s literature or are we merely “speaking up for, and keeping the lines open to, our lost, nearly forgotten selves?” Mind you when he wrote this it was before the whole Harry Potter phenomenon – and there were plenty of adults who enjoyed curling up with that series. Still, the appeal to adults of Harry Potter might have been as much about the finely constructed plot and suspenseful narrative as the fantasy itself – its own inviting escape from the more mundane aspects of everyday adult existence. In contrast, The Daydreamer, McEwan explains, is a book for adults about a child in a language that children can understand. It’s a fantasy too as the title suggests, but it’s a fantasy that engages rather than escapes reality.
Peter, the almost decade old central character, is a dreamer, though his dreaming is not so much to take refuge from the world as it is a way to explore its curious and limitless possibilities. Peter’s dreaming is pure imaginative freedom – and it’s this propensity for quiet daydreaming that unsettles the grown-ups since they have no way to control what’s going on inside his head; “He could have been setting his school on fire or feeding his sister to an alligator and escaping in a hot air balloon, but all they saw was a boy staring at the blue sky without blinking, a boy who did not hear you when you called his name.”
The book is divided into chapters – each chapter its own story linked into the broader narrative of Peter and his family. During these adventures of the imagination Peter switches bodies with the family cat and later his baby cousin. He plots how to catch the neighborhood burglar with Roald Dahl-like inventiveness; confronts an unconventional bully using fantasy logic; and inhabits the body of his young adult self. Through each of these transformations we get to share Peter’s pleasure of viewing the world from another person’s (or animal’s in the case of the cat) perspective and also come to experience empathy and understanding in the process. Not unlike the adventure of reading itself.
And although this might appear to betray the book with well-meaning adult moral purpose, the only real message that The Daydreamer imparts is; imagine. Like the baby in the story who is overcome by the beauty of sunlight playing on a wall we are equally mesmerized by McEwan’s luminous storytelling – and the wonderfully real possibility of it all.
Peter, the almost decade old central character, is a dreamer, though his dreaming is not so much to take refuge from the world as it is a way to explore its curious and limitless possibilities. Peter’s dreaming is pure imaginative freedom – and it’s this propensity for quiet daydreaming that unsettles the grown-ups since they have no way to control what’s going on inside his head; “He could have been setting his school on fire or feeding his sister to an alligator and escaping in a hot air balloon, but all they saw was a boy staring at the blue sky without blinking, a boy who did not hear you when you called his name.”
The book is divided into chapters – each chapter its own story linked into the broader narrative of Peter and his family. During these adventures of the imagination Peter switches bodies with the family cat and later his baby cousin. He plots how to catch the neighborhood burglar with Roald Dahl-like inventiveness; confronts an unconventional bully using fantasy logic; and inhabits the body of his young adult self. Through each of these transformations we get to share Peter’s pleasure of viewing the world from another person’s (or animal’s in the case of the cat) perspective and also come to experience empathy and understanding in the process. Not unlike the adventure of reading itself.
And although this might appear to betray the book with well-meaning adult moral purpose, the only real message that The Daydreamer imparts is; imagine. Like the baby in the story who is overcome by the beauty of sunlight playing on a wall we are equally mesmerized by McEwan’s luminous storytelling – and the wonderfully real possibility of it all.
