A fascinating work of historical fiction and an extremely satisfying read

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	• Dreamers of the Day: A Novel Mary Doria Russell Random House, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Skip the Lovely Bones approach

Dreamers borrows from The Lovely Bones in its perspective, but without the cause or skill: the last section undermines any serious intentions of the earlier ones and oddly truncates the heroine's story.

Historical fiction, especially when real and fictional characters intersect, often sacrifices narrative for cleverness; in this case, the narrator even claims to be an unnamed women in a photo with Churchill's party in Egypt. Still, Russell writes well even while she strains credulity and has done her research. It's a fascinating, if slightly biased look at the Cairo Conference, and I want to go back and reread A Peace to End All Peace and find Howell's biography of Gertrude Bell that has been lingering unread somewhere on my bookshelves since I bought two copies of it years ago with good intentions. (Two copies because I forgot I bought the first.)

Russell tries too many things in Dreamers, including a thinly disguised take on the current Middle East crisis, so that readers end up straddling three time periods and know they are being led. Russell should have stuck to developing her character and telling the story. Try Russell's A Thread of Grace for a better read.

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A fascinating work of historical fiction and an extremely satisfying read

The only member of her family to survive the influenza pandemic of 1918, former fifth grade schoolteacher Agnes Shanklin and her dachshund Rosie set off from Cleveland, Ohio on a cruse to Egypt "...to escape from the sadness." She arrives in 1921 to find the local population in a state of agitated turmoil over the impending meeting of their new British governors. They are torn between a desire to kill the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Churchill and admiration and awe for the war hero who did so much to liberate the Arabs them from the rule of the Turks, Colonel Lawrence. She also arrives to find that dogs are not welcome in first-class hotels in Cairo.

Fortunately, she is rescued from her predicament by members of the very same English that are causing such a stir, Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence. She soon makes the acquaintance of Winston Churchill and a very charming German gentleman who proves to be a very attentive friend and sympathetic listener. Thus the author skillfully sets the stage to portray the men and women who literally shaped the modern Middle East. As the fictional Miss Shanklin puts it, "my little story has become your history." She might have added, "and your current struggles."

Dreamers of the day is a fascinating work of historical fiction and an extremely satisfying read.

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Dreamers of the Day

Another unbelievable reading experience! Mary Doria Russell continues to astound the reader with incredibly personal experiences with her characters and settings. Dreamers of the Day permits the reader a fictional view into a time and place little discussed--1921 in Egypt--with a very current theme--the Middle East and Arab peoples. With every one of her novels, she leaves me breathless for more...more of the characters, more of the story, more of the culture. And yet, rather than succomb to the series, she thrills us with variety in her stories. Futuristic or historical, I know that when I open to the first page, I will be enthralled until the last word.

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A Little Less Would Have Made This a Perfect Book

If I had stopped on p. 234, this would have been a
wonderful book! I was thoroughly involved with the
characters and the situations, and I thought everything
had been resolved beautifully. This author is truly
a superb writer, but she lost me with the final twist.
It's the story of Agnes Shanklin, schoolteacher, and
how she grows and changes through the years. I loved
reading about her life and the lives of those around
her. The characters were all so believable, even though
I know it's a work of fiction. Mary Doria Russell is
a most gifted writer....I would have rated it a five
star...but the ending ruined it for me.

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Interesting and a little odd

I listened to the audio CD version of this novel. The reader, Ann Marie Lee did an excellent job creating her character - the book is written in the first person from the point of view of protagonist Agnes Shanklin.

The reader gets a history lesson along with the story of Agnes S., who loses her entire living family to the influenza epidemic in 1919 and travels to Egypt in 1921. It's clear that the author is illustrating for the reader how some of the critical decisions and actions made by the West at that time set the stage for current conditions in the Middle East.

I enjoyed the story of Agnes Shanklin as well as the trip through history (and a tour of Egypt). My only reservation is that, for some reason the author decided to tell the story "from the grave." Agnes is narrating from the afterlife - in the present time. I'm assuming this device makes it easier to have Agnes comment on the quagmire that is the Middle East today. I think there might've been a simpler and smoother way to accomplish that - because the ending doesn't fit very well with the rest of the book and just seems bizarre.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

?I suppose I ought to warn you at the outset that my present circumstances are puzzling, even to me. Nevertheless, I am sure of this much: My little story has become your history. You won?t really understand your times until you understand mine.?

So begins the account of Agnes Shanklin, the charmingly diffident narrator of Mary Doria Russell?s compelling new novel, Dreamers of the Day. And what is Miss Shanklin?s ?little story?? Nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East at the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, where Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell met to decide the fate of the Arab world?and of our own.

A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions?and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie?enters into the company of the historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days at a hotel in Cairo, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.

Neither a pawn nor a participant at the conference, Agnes is ostensibly insignificant, and that makes her a welcome sounding board for Churchill, Lawrence, and Bell. It also makes her unexpectedly attractive to the charismatic German spy Karl Weilbacher. As Agnes observes the tumultuous inner workings of nation-building, she is drawn more and more deeply into geopolitical intrigue and toward a personal awakening.

With prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the Nile, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East with a story that brilliantly elucidates today?s headlines. As enlightening as it is entertaining, Dreamers of the Day is a memorable, passionate, gorgeously written novel.

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