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Mars's Reviews > What Dreams May Come
What Dreams May Come
by
by
This is likely to become a DNF (spoiler DNF). I came here to read reviews to see if it was worth it and quickly I'm thinking the answer is no.
I wanted to read the book as my mother was very sick and died young, she loved the movie. We'd watched it together and I remember it being enjoyable. So I thought the book might add depth. It did not.
First, the protagonist is insufferable. He's vapid and self centered. Not a likable character at all. He can't follow the most simple instructions or grok the simplest understandings. He sounds like he was an awful husband, basically gives a few sentences of thought to his son and barely a sentence to his daughter and all of those are about him, not their grieving or pain, or even how he cares about them. His daughter is such an afterthought it made me ill. You don't even know she exists for the first several chapters then she is simply used for his own means. His wife is often described in terms of him. He's just one dimensional and egotistical, and remarkably slow.
The writing has constant contradictions. In one moment, his wife is afraid of adventure. A few pages later she loves it. You experience in death what you thought death was in life. But he was an atheist who now has this vibrant afterlife? Just constant me saying out loud "but you just said..."
The elitism and ableism in the book is perhaps the most problematic. A one armed man is still one armed because he still hasn't accepted himself. People that continue to have sex in heaven are looked down upon. People that struggle with depression and mental health are sent to a personal hell. The verbiage when talking about various beliefs and religions is dripping with the author's distaste. The writing itself is banal and amateur but the contents are more worrisome. It's just such a supremacy fantasy that I can't see enjoying it.
(view spoiler)
I'm listening to the audiobook and to be fair, the narrator's intensely bored tone probably isn't helping. Remember in school when each student would have to read a paragraph and the class would just drone on? That's this narrator. But I believe even reading it, or with a more lively reader, my feelings would remain the same. A self centered protagonist writes a book about how everything is about him from his dead dog to his cousin to everyone in his life and how he is so important that his death changes everything, and it's up to him to save the day, but yet he's so stupid he can't follow the most simple concepts without digging into them for pages.
Yeah, pretty sure it's gonna be a DNF for me. Gonna try the movie as an adult and see if it holds anything.
I wanted to read the book as my mother was very sick and died young, she loved the movie. We'd watched it together and I remember it being enjoyable. So I thought the book might add depth. It did not.
First, the protagonist is insufferable. He's vapid and self centered. Not a likable character at all. He can't follow the most simple instructions or grok the simplest understandings. He sounds like he was an awful husband, basically gives a few sentences of thought to his son and barely a sentence to his daughter and all of those are about him, not their grieving or pain, or even how he cares about them. His daughter is such an afterthought it made me ill. You don't even know she exists for the first several chapters then she is simply used for his own means. His wife is often described in terms of him. He's just one dimensional and egotistical, and remarkably slow.
The writing has constant contradictions. In one moment, his wife is afraid of adventure. A few pages later she loves it. You experience in death what you thought death was in life. But he was an atheist who now has this vibrant afterlife? Just constant me saying out loud "but you just said..."
The elitism and ableism in the book is perhaps the most problematic. A one armed man is still one armed because he still hasn't accepted himself. People that continue to have sex in heaven are looked down upon. People that struggle with depression and mental health are sent to a personal hell. The verbiage when talking about various beliefs and religions is dripping with the author's distaste. The writing itself is banal and amateur but the contents are more worrisome. It's just such a supremacy fantasy that I can't see enjoying it.
(view spoiler)
I'm listening to the audiobook and to be fair, the narrator's intensely bored tone probably isn't helping. Remember in school when each student would have to read a paragraph and the class would just drone on? That's this narrator. But I believe even reading it, or with a more lively reader, my feelings would remain the same. A self centered protagonist writes a book about how everything is about him from his dead dog to his cousin to everyone in his life and how he is so important that his death changes everything, and it's up to him to save the day, but yet he's so stupid he can't follow the most simple concepts without digging into them for pages.
Yeah, pretty sure it's gonna be a DNF for me. Gonna try the movie as an adult and see if it holds anything.
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What Dreams May Come.
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Reading Progress
October 22, 2023
–
Started Reading
October 22, 2023
– Shelved
October 31, 2023
–
Finished Reading
