Fever Dream: A Novel

"This book marks a change in Samanta Schweblin’s writing. Previously she was main a writer of short stories ; Fever Dream is her first novel and it led her to be very well-known, especially in the international sphere. Lots of people prefer to read novels to short stories—I mean, I love short stories, but I know that most readers prefer novels. So Fever Dream marked an important change for her. It’s in the margins of science fiction or fantastic literature. Something is happening, and you don’t know if it is real or not. It’s in the neighbourhood of Roald Dahl. He is very different to Samanta Schweblin, but he too created stories that felt real, but were not part of the real world. In Spanish, the book is called Distancia de rescate. Do you know what that means? It’s that distance between yourself as a parent, and your son or daughter, whereby you are still within the limits of being able to save them from a dangerous situation if need be. The main character of the book is always thinking ‘my son, he is right there. If I had to, I could run and take him out of danger just in time. But if he walks a few metres further, I will not be within the rescue distance. I will not be able to reach him in time to save him. I know they had to change the title for English-speaking people, but it’s a wonderful idea, this concept of the possibility of rescuing your loved one. I don’t know if it has a name. For example, in the case of García Márquez you could say his very clearly under ‘magical realism’… with Samanta Schweblin, you are always reading always with el corazón en la boca —your heart in your throat. You are constantly feeling that something is about to happen. When you start to read one of her stories and she tells you that there is a hole in the ground, and that there is also a small child, you start wondering: oh God, no, what is going to happen? There is something like always with Samanta Schweblin. She puts together the elements and you think: oh no, what is happening here? You have to read the whole story to understand it. I like her imagination and the freedom with which she comes up with her stories."

"What I love about this book is the register. At the start, it is the register that makes it inherently uncanny, unhinging, destabilising. You realise slowly that it’s a conversation between two people—a dying woman and a boy who are talking in a hospital. So from the woman’s slow deathbed, if you like. While she’s coming in and out of consciousness and negotiating various levels of reality and hallucination, but he’s trying to get her to tell him a story that his mother told her. He’s pressing her to speak, and she doesn’t always want to speak. You also realise that there’s been a very troubling event that has led to the woman being on her deathbed. With another writer, this could be so convoluted, and Samanta Schweblin has talked about how it took several drafts to get it right. Again, it’s a short book. The meat and the bones of the novel all takes place within this conversation. The dynamic is a little off: he’s not sufficiently respectful, or his voice seems older than his body. That’s when you realise that he’s had experiences that a young boy shouldn’t have had, and it’s given him a kind of sinister gravitas. It starts with the conversation. Inside that, you have the story. In the story, the protagonist and her daughter leave Buenos Aires to go to their rural holiday home. And in this rural landscape, you have very palpable concerns around GM crops and fertilisers being used in the soybean fields, and they’re poisoning the landscape and water. Then you have this folkloric element: this healer, who lives on the outskirts of the town. She’s a matter-of-fact presence, even though her powers are supernatural. There are no questions around the veracity of her power: any children who drink the poisoned water and have to go to this woman to be healed. That’s how the two strands—realist and supernatural—overlap. She heals them through this process called transmigration, which is something Samanta Schweblin invented, but everything else is very much from the real world, from Argentina. Even this kind of folkloric healer is very much present in the rural landscape in real life. Again, Fernanda Melchor has talked about this, in relation to Mexico. There are so many people there who are off the grid, where medical health systems are concerned. So these healers are like GPs, in that they’re an accessible source of care. None of this is a huge plot spoiler, in terms of the book, because the energy with which it unfolds is as compelling as the content itself. And every time you think you’ve landed on something it gets pulled out from under you. Every voice contains another voice, everyone is haunted by an event or a person. It’s a short book but it sustains that eeriness and uncanniness to incredible effect. As I writer, I read it and think: how did she do that? Then I try to break it down. It’s hugely worthwhile."