3.5 stars. This is not the type of book I'd usually go for but after it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize I thought I'd give it a shot. I really enjoyed this book. It's a very short read - I finished it in one sitting, but the story and writing style aren't overly simplistic. A haunting story that I've already spent time thinking about since I finished it - it's unsettling but in a weirdly beautiful way. I'm not sure if I wish there had been more character development or not, it may have taken away from the plot itself, but I do wish we'd got to know a bit more about the characters themselves.

I was entranced, I was creeped out. I still don't know what happened but this book with its pitch perfect prose that carries you to the end leaves the after image of all those emotions weeks after reading. An amazing experience with an unusual set up.

I normally love "weird" books, but this was only okay for me. There are a few reasons for this, firstly because the story is written in the form of a dialogue, most of the characters felt unreal (which I realize as the intention), but anyone that reads my reviews will know that I have to connect to characters to really enjoy a story. Secondly, I never felt the eerie, scary feeling that other reviewers are referring to. Lastly although I normally like open-ended conclusions, I think that this book was written as a metaphor but I have to admit, that I could not figure out what the metaphor was. 
The book is well-written, and the translation is amazing. It is also on the Booker prize shortlist, so please don't base your decision for not reading this short story on my review.

This book gets full marks for writing quality, originality, plot development, and overall enjoyment. I have not read anything quite like this before. From the opening sentence Schweblin builds the tension. The story is menacing, disconcerting and unsettling. It appears to be a simple dialogue between 2 characters, but who are those characters? What is real? And, how will we know what is the “important thing” when we reach it in the narrative? Nothing is straightforward and everything has more than 1 interpretation. Is this all just the fevered dream of a dying woman or a nightmarish reality that is drawing subtly yet inextricably to it’s inevitable climax?

My first thought when I finished this book was, “wow.” That feeling has remained with me even several weeks after finishing the book. I truly believe that Fever Dreams is one of those books that will play on the reader’s mind for years to come.

Some people may be put off by the fantastical story, but for me the absolute craziness makes this a book worth reading.

The synopsis promised this to be "a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale." It did not lie.

This is the narrative between two individuals. One is recounting all that has led to her current prostrate predicament, as she lies in a hospital bed. The other is the child who sits besides. The child is not her child, and yet he fits into her story and seamlessly as if he was so...

This book was, in a word... trippy. Despite the short size, and the quickness with which I read it, there was much to gather from this novel. And none of it made sense! I spent much of the first half of the novel at a total loss as to what was actually going on, and yet still, somehow, enjoying myself immensely. This book has an indescribable quality to it that was utterly mesmerising. It induced in me a drug-like stupor that accepted every inconceivable fact this put forward and denied it any contemplation over its inconsistencies or confusion it caused.

I think if you try to force this book into some semblance of order then it would be a trudging, difficult, and slow-paced read. If you allow yourself to be borne along on the current of the plot, accepting of all that passes you, then it becomes an experience. And that is what I gathered from this. There might have been no definitive story or morale that I took away, but I enjoyed it exactly because of its refusal at giving the reader what they expect from a book. The indefinable qualities made this a unique reading experience and a worthy Man Booker International Prize candidate.

This is a very unusual novella, structured as questions and answers between a dying woman, Amanda, and a child, David, who is not hers. Amanda has been on holiday with her daughter, Nina, and has befriended Carla, David’s mother. Carla is frightened of David, calls him a monster, and tells Amanda that her son has been ‘transmigrated’ into another body after being poisoned.
This ‘new’ David is certainly strange, but is Carla telling the truth? Is she deluded? How has Amanda ended up dying in a hospital bed? And where is Nina?
The writing here (translated by Megan McDowell) is just excellent. There is a sense of foreboding, of menace, a real strangeness to the tale that is executed beautifully. It's unlike anything I’ve read before, and it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I’m sure, but I found it completely absorbing. In an age of disappointing, box-ticking, formulaic books, it was a genuine pleasure to read. There are no answers here, no satisfying resolution. It’s creepy, uncanny and weird, really, if I'm honest. But it’s brilliant.

A totally unique, sad but fascinating book. Sometimes confusing as a lot goes unexplained but in all a good read if unsettling in places. A strange but good book!

This novel appealed to me a lot at the start. A woman is dying in a hospital, talking to a mysterious visitor who has an urgent mission. The setting is original and intriguing - a place where the water poisons the children so they're all strange and deformed. I very much liked the way the book began, with a mystery, and a woman who does a bizarre and desperate thing to try to save her son. But then the story seemed to become muddled and repetitive, as if the author lost the strong clarity of the start and I felt the book was much longer than it deserved. The end seemed too insubstantial - as if the author had a lot of significance in mind but couldn't make us feel it. 
Of course, not every story has to be presented clearly or neatly. Also, this narrative might be a progression of mental dissolution. It might be following dream logic, as the title suggests. But usually the confusion, muddle and repetition will feel worthwhile in a grand scheme, as if we've seen something that tapped into deeper ideas and truths. With this book, I felt the dream dissolved too early and the story just meandered to the end, keeping the same note with no further development. I didn't feel there was any profounder point, except that fever can be like a nightmare - which is not really enough.
So, all in all - I loved the beginning. I thought there were haunting ideas with the continued, mysterious appearance of water, and the woman with the gilt bikini and shoes. But David's utterances and Amanda's wanderings became too one-note.

Two people are in a hospital. Amanda is feverish and believes she is near death. David is a boy who is not her son. David is pushing her to recount the events that led up to her illness.

She tells a story of her family and his. It begins as an innocent holiday friendship but has a sinister undertone. David’s mother tells Amanda that her son fell ill before they met, apparently due to exposure to something in the environment. She is convinced that she lost his soul when his body recovered, that this was a bargain she made with a healer.

The tension builds as the story unfolds in a long, breathless narrative (it’s a short novel, but conversely one very long chapter). As she tells the story, David pushes her to remember certain incidents, while dismissing others which she wants to pursue.

I read on, intrigued at first, then a little impatient, but anticipating that there would be clues and allusions to the meaning of the narrative. Is the story chronological? What is hallucinated and what real? Where is David’s mother and Amanda’s daughter?

Then I got to the end and it just sort of – well, ended. And I’m deflated. Am I being dense? Did I miss something? I didn’t expect a neat resolution tied with a bow, but I thought that there would be insights and inferences, ideas which would resonate and send me back through the key scenes to interpret them anew. Now I’m not sure what the themes of the book are, apart from ‘pesticides are bad’ and ‘parenting is scary’.

Perhaps my expectations were too high. Fever Dream is innovative in its form and beautifully written (and translated) but I feel like I wanted something more.

This is a small book that packs a punch. 

It's a unique premise that keeps you guessing throughout. The lines between reality and dream, truth and lies, consciousness and confusion are constantly blurred, giving a distorting effect that means you're never quite sure of what's going on. 

Schweblin's prose has been beautifully translated to retain the depth and nuances of the original. The ephemeral fleetingness of the 150 pages is balanced with episodes of such tension and suspense that you're sure to read this one sitting. 

I can't say I was fully certain of the outcome of events but I enjoyed the process of exploring them massively.

This is a very strange little book and I can’t say I was all that convinced by it. It’s in the form of a dialogue between Amanda, a young woman lying in a hospital bed and apparently dying, and David, the young son of her friend Carla, who is asking her questions about what has led them to this point. Bit by bit the back story is revealed to us although little of it is actually explained. There’s a clear political agenda to the story regarding the use of pesticides in Argentina and their toxicity, and there’s also a supernatural and quite creepy element to the narrative. I found it intriguing but with so few answers and no resolution I also found it quite frustrating. Just not my sort of book really. Well written and expertly translated but it left me feeling dissatisfied.

After reading The Sense of an Ending, I became more aware of books shortlisted for various awards. When NetGalley gave me an option to request books shortlisted for Man Booker prize, I quickly clicked on a few. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin was one of them. And what a brilliant book choice that was.

[...] worms, something very much like worms, and the exact moment when they touch your body for the first time. A confusing sentence for a book that raises a lot of questions and leaves a lot to our imagination.

Fever Dream starts with Amanda, a young woman, lying in a hospital bed, David, a young boy, sitting next to her. They aren’t related and yet they are in this situation together.

Through the conversation between David and Amanda, we slowly follow the course of events that led to this precise moment. David prompts Amanda as she tries to remember what landed her dying in a hospital bed.

Amanda left her husband in the city and rented a holiday home with her daughter Nina. Things get complicated when Carla, a local, tells Amanda about her son’s poisoning. The only way to save the boy was to transmigrate a part of David’s soul into a different body. But the David she ended up with isn’t her son. There’s a series of strange events, that all add to the oppressive atmosphere of the entire novel.

The author’s masterful description of the heat, the landscape empty of livestock and dry land create an eerie feeling and Amanda’s words of something terrible will happen create a sense of urgency, which prevents us from putting this book down. 

While Amanda’s trying to remember what happened and where Nina is, David is the one that tries to lead her in the right direction. To find that exact event that changed everything. He tells her this is not important or we need to go faster when Amanda seems to recollect the past events.

This brilliant book kept me on my toes. Amanda keeps talking about rescue distance between a mother and a child and as this rescue distance gets shorter, the tension arises and you can feel your toes curling in anticipation.

There are plenty of metaphors in the book, so if you enjoy reading deeper, this is the book for you. Fear is also omnipresent and permeates everything, fear of separation, fear of something bad happening to your children and more. The title Fever Dream also accurately describes the way reading this book feels. It’s exactly as if you were in a dream. You know, the feeling of the thing you’re looking for being within your grasp, but you can’t get to it.

It’s really a masterfully written book and even though this isn’t the type I usually read, I finished it within two days.

This is a totally compelling read.  It starts in a deliberately mysterious way and develops a sense of increasing suspense and unease to the very end.  Although it is a slim book, it certainly enthrals the reader with its dual perspective of a mother and a small boy, who have an extended conversation that becomes more and more disturbing as the situation unfolds, exploring the relationships between the woman and her daughter and the boy  and his mother.  It had me gripped and desperate to find out what would happen, although the signs throughout are not promising.  It was certainly a book to make you hold your breath...and never take another one!.

Wow, what a read! Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream, translated from the Spanish is an intriguing read. It charts a conversation between Amanda, dying in a hospital bed, and David, a mysterious boy who perhaps is not who he appears to be. Where is Amanda's daughter Nina? Has she been saved from Amanda's fate? Is David really David, and why is his mother Carla so disturbed by him? Why is Amanda dying? Are her musings real or just feverish imaginations?

This is a book which can't be compared with any other I've read - it's unique and compelling. It's not very long and you'll find you've sped your way through it in just a few days just to find out what happens.

This is a compelling, thrilling read. I inhaled it over a few hours. Hasn't stuck with me and I've too many questions unanswered rather than curiosity piqued. But it is a helluva ride while it's moving.

I'm afraid this book wasn't for me, but it was decently short. I found the lack of mise-en-scène not disturbing but irritating. I got very few mental images reading this book. I just couldn't picture anything. When are we, where are we? Is it simply a flashback or can we alter the path of events? If not, what is the point? I raced through this novel hoping for redeeming answers at the end but got nothing.

I very much wish I could say I enjoyed this, fairly short story, but unfortunately I cannot. I would say that  it was a tense, well crafted read,  I felt compelled to finish it in the hopes of understanding what was going on, and I really wanted to understand what was going on...but alas I remain clueless.

This gripping novel made me immediately flip back to the beginning to search for details I might have missed. I also felt compelled to search for other people’s opinions online to try to figure out what happened. “Fever Dream” is an incredibly creepy and mesmerising story about a woman named Amanda confined in a rural hospital having a tense conversation with her neighbour’s son David. She discusses with him her arrival at a holiday home with her daughter Nina (her husband is due to arrive later) and events involving David’s mother Carla. At first I found this to be quite a disorientating story because it’s largely composed of dialogue taking place in two distinct time periods, but once I had a good handle on the characters I felt completely wrapped in the mystery. I didn’t entirely understand what was happening, but I knew a lot was at stake as David continuously prompts Amanda to skip over parts of the story that are “not important.” Time is limited because he tells Amanda that her life is drawing to a close.

Reading “Fever Dream” felt like the experience of watching a Guillermo del Toro film where reality is slightly distorted as something very sinister is happening just beneath the surface of all the events taking place. We’re in that blurry territory that borders the fantastical and the psychologically disturbed. In this way, the novel accurately recreates the experience of being in a feverish state of mind. There are horses that go missing, a boy that turns into a monster, dead ducks, a disease that’s “like worms” and a poison that permeates the environment. Because of Amanda’s hazy sense of consciousness and uncertain memory, this story has an infectious hallucinatory effect that left me highly unsettled and grasping for understanding.

One of the prevailing themes of the novel is the degree to which we’re connected to the people we love the most. Amanda frequently expresses concern throughout the story that she wants to keep her daughter Nina within “rescue distance,” which is another way of saying within the bounds of her protective reach. She envisions it like an invisible rope connecting them and if Nina roams too far away this virtual rope will snap. This accurately reflects the way the people we love inhabit our consciousness – something which causes us happiness but also anxiety because we fear for their safety. In her debilitated state in the hospital, Amanda repeatedly expresses concern for the whereabouts of Nina. David assures her that this isn’t important, but of course for Amanda her daughter’s safety is the most important thing. The way in which children are individuals we alternately fear and fear for reminded me of the similarly gothic novel “The Children’s Home” by Charles Lambert. It could be that David is reminding Amanda that in the end we are quintessentially alone or he could be a sinister force compelling Amanda to break her connection with the person she cares for the most.

The tension over whether Amanda should trust David or his mother Carla is so interesting. Carla is mistrustful of her son, yet she seems to be the one preventing Amanda from leaving this uneasy environment when she becomes alarmed. Schweblin drops in tantalizing imagery such as the way Carla wears a gold bikini or the ominous dampness which covers Nina’s clothes which Amanda mistakenly assumes is dew from the grass. These are details which feel intensely vivid, yet their meaning is uncertain. The story needles the reader’s sub-conscious playing upon our unexpressed fears and anxieties in a way that simulates how we are helpless participants within a nightmare. For such a short novel “Fever Dream” makes an incredibly compelling and satisfying puzzle.

Amanda is dying in hospital while a boy called David sits next to her. Hes not her son but starts to ask her questions about how she's ended up in hospital. We learn it's all started when Amanda goes to the countryside to holiday with her daughter, waiting for her husband to join her. There she meets Carla, David's mother, who tells Amanda that David was her son but now he isn't. She goes on to explain how David drank some poisoned river water and in act of desperation, Amanda takes David to see a local woman. She says she can save David but only by sending part of his soul into another body and inviting a different soul to inhabit his body. The book continues with Amanda trying to recount the events that lead up to her being in hospital,

 I devoured this book in one sitting at night, I just couldn't put it down! The book has this eerie feeling that creeps up on you and unsettles you. Right off the bat you're left wondering what's happened and my mind twisted all over the place trying to work out what went wrong and who to trust. I was confused for most of the time reading this, which I liked as it felt it fit in well with the title of the book and the how disorientated Amanda is recounting the story. I do wish the ending had been a little bit clearer, I was still a bit confused at the end and had to read other reviews to figure out what had happened.

Strange 

'A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child.'

Slowly, with David's urging, Amanda recounts the turn of events that brought her there.

This is a strange book, fascinating, and very much unlike anything I've read before. I wasn't sure how to react to the gradual revelations. I could understand Amanda's confusion and doubts. Can you trust a mother who tells you she believes her child is a monster? Or do you label her as delusional? 

What I did find interesting was Carla's character, her feelings and her certainty that her son David was, indeed, a monster. Her strength, in the face of such feelings, was admirable. Her small boy's behaviour was terrifying, how she survived it was incredible. A potentially psychopathic child was enough to make this a gripping read, especially when another child could be in danger.

What begins as a short holiday for Amanda and her daughter, quickly becomes eerie, for all involved. Except, David, it seems. 

The ending is a sad one so be prepared. I'd say this book is good for a one-time read. After that, I think it'll lose its magic. 

I received this book through NetGalley.