Fever Dream, by Samanta Schweblin

In Fever Dream (2014), by Samanta Schweblin, who knows what is happening?  It’s not enough to say nothing is what it seems.  There’s no baseline for what is or isn’t.  We can guess and speculate, and we can make assumptions.  It appears that the novel is a conversation between a woman named Amanda and a younger person named David.  David might be a child, or an adult.  He might be Amanda’s brother.  He might be real or imagined, living or dead. Amanda’s daughter is Nina, and as the novel moves on we deduce that she has disappeared or died.  Amanda herself is worried about dying.  She’s worrying about worms taking over her body.  Worms suggest death, mortality.  Amanda is in fact near death, dying in a trauma center.  David seems to be preparing her for death, and for other realizations. She’s the victim (we think) of poisoning, environmental poisoning or perhaps deliberate poisoning.  David was poisoned too, as was Nina.  David grew sick and nearly died, but a woman with certain abilities transferred half of his spirit into another body so he could recover.  This may have happened to Nina as well, or she may have died. Carla is Amanda’s mother, whom she reviles and loves.  Carla rescues David and takes him to the spirit changer.  She may have done the same for Nina.  The narrative really does have the quality of a fever dream, a hallucination or a delirious imagining.  It’s deftly, brilliantly executed.  The tension builds throughout, even though we’re not sure what generates it.  The novel is relatively short, fortunately so, because such a book couldn’t sustain this approach over a greater length.