How ‘Fever Dream’ Subverts Conventional Literary Forms

“For the first time in a long while, he looked down and saw his hands. If you have ever had this experience, you’ll know just what I mean.”

An extract from Jesse Ball’s The Curfew (2011), this short epigraph perfectly sets the tone and overriding themes of Samanta Schweblin’s highly-acclaimed novel, Fever Dream.

Schweblin, an award-winning Argentine novelist who grew up in Buenos Aires during the early 1980s, is generally lauded as one of Latin America’s most talented authors. This belief was confirmed in her inclusion in the 2017 Bogota39: New Voices from Latin America, a decennial anthology that features 39 of the continent’s most gifted writers.

However, it was her first novel, Fever Dream, that would see Schweblin really cement her place within the international literary sphere. Published in late 2017, Schweblin’s novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017, although eventually lost out to David Grossman’s A Horse Walks Into a Bar.

In light of the novel’s prestige, Schweblin’s Fever Dream has achieved plaudits for its terrifying ability to unsettle and unnerve the reader. The Metro even went to the extent of describing it as, “Impossible to put down even while it forces you to cower under the sheets, queasy with unnameable fear.”

Manic, paranoid and dread-inducing are just a few ways to describe Schweblin’s work. Set in a hospital in a nondescript region of rural Argentina, the protagonist, Amanda, is forced to recount a series of recent events by a boy named David. Though, this setting is just as lucid as the other events of the novel and David may well just be a part of Amanda’s feverish state of mind.

Fever Dream demands to be read at a certain pace. The magic is lost on those who need to pick it up a number of times. However, only 150 pages of terse prose, it’s difficult not to burn through this slight read.

From the outset, it’s worth saying that Schweblin’s Fever Dream is everything you’d expect it to be. For anyone who has ever experienced any kind of fever-induced delusions, the events of the novel will appear completely reasonable and even accurate, but for those who haven’t, this book is 150 pages of unadulterated paranoia, terror and fear.

Abandonment Issues…

Fever Dream toys with the greatest fears of them all, abandonment, loss and neglect. A story that focuses on parenthood and the responsibility of raising a child, Schweblin essentially explores that bond and exploits the bank of fear and anxiety inherent within that relationship.

Amanda is terrified at the thought of losing her daughter Nina, so much so that she constantly refers to something she calls the “rescue distance”, an invented measurement based on how long it would take her to save her child in any given situation.

On holiday without her husband, Amanda becomes friends with another woman named Carla who spins a chilling tale about her son, David, the same David who is speaking to Amanda throughout the entire narrative.

The tale goes that David was inexplicably poisoned one day and Carla was forced to take him to the “Greenhouse” which is the home of a rural healer who can “see people’s energy”. In order to save David’s life, it is agreed that David undergoes a mysterious procedure:

“If we could move David’s spirit to another body in time, then part of the poison would also go with him. Split into two bodies, there was the chance he could pull through. It wasn’t a sure thing, but sometimes it worked.”

As a result of this, David is never the same again. Carla spends her life searching for the remnants of David in other children, however the implication, of course, is that much of David resides in Amanda.

The Method in the Madness…

In a novel like Fever Dream, where elements of real world are refracted and distorted through a kaleidoscope of hallucinations, any real meaning is decidedly difficult to attain.

While many critics were shocked and awed by Schweblin’s terror-inducing novel, I found myself more fascinated by her capability to recreate the elements of a nightmare that really make us wake up in a cold sweat.

Very candidly speaking, Fever Dream is a perfect reflection of the narrative of the standard dream. Much like a dream, the novel has this certain lucidity built into it that allows Schweblin to transition between a variety of different scenarios with relative ease.

In a strange way, Amanda’s David, the disembodied David that speaks to her from an obscure present state, actually resembles a kind of narrative guide. David sets the pace of the novel. When Schweblin demands the reader to pay attention, she uses the voice of David to focus in on a particular passage and when she wants to speed things along, David’s voice becomes more agitated and manic. In an unstructured novel without any chapters or significant breaks in the narrative, the ethereal character of David is provided with the reins.

Among her exploration of central themes, Schweblin crowds her novel with terrifying images and unannounced interruptions. From a three-legged dog to a child that kills and buries 28 ducks, the novel’s tone is dark and distended. However, one of the book’s lasting images is when a group of school children cross the road in front of Amanda’s car:

“They are strange children. They’re, I don’t know, my eyes are burning. Deformed children. They don’t have eyelashes, or eyebrows. Their skin is pink, very pink, and scaly too… now the last one goes by. The last woman also passes, and before she follows the children she stands looking at me for a moment.”

The recurring images of abnormality and deformity are central to Schweblin’s dreamlike narrative. In Fever Dream, Schweblin creates an environment where nothing sits quite right and where her protagonist just doesn’t fit in. For example, even in the passage above, it is Amanda and Nina who are the outsiders, not only in the region but in appearance too.

A Return to Reality…

Fever Dream is not your normal novel. Essentially reading more like a dream than a literary form, it has the power to subvert everything you might expect to find within. With this freedom, Schweblin effectively demonstrates why the modern Latin American canon is well worth keeping an eye on. Innovative, original and totally mad, Fever Dream is required reading for anyone serious about picking up something completely unique.