 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about Feverdream by Samantha Schweblin. Schweblin. I don't think there's any other way to pronounce that. Schweblin. Samantha Schweblin is a author who's originally from Buenos Aires that now lives in Berlin and Megan McDowell is the translator of the book and Megan lives in Chile even though she's from I think Kentucky but this and she does a lot of literary translations from what it says. Megan McDowell is a let's read both their bios. Samantha Schweblin was chosen by Granta as one of the 22 best writers in Spanish under the age of 35. She is the author of three short story collections which have won numerous awards including the prestigious one of Rolfo Prize and been translated into 20 languages. Feverdream is her first novel and is a finalist for Mario Vargas Losa Prize and winner of the Tigre Juan Prize. Originally from Buenos Aires, she lives in Berlin about the translator. Megan McDowell is a literary translator from Kentucky, I was right, who has translated many contemporary authors from Latin America and Spain including Alejandro Zambra, she lives in Chile. There is a couple things I want to touch on first. The only negatives I want to touch on are pretty big negatives in my opinion. The biggest problem is the book is written in a very very vague style. I would say that it even gives Peter Straub a run for his money as vague as he is. The thing is with Straub, he writes such long works that you kind of get into the, you kind of roll with the punches as it were. You get into a not routine, you get comfortable, sorry. All that, I said all that say you get comfortable with his vagueness. This one, the book's only 180 pages, which this will be important also. You see how the font is small, but see how much margin there is on the page? Now for reference, here's a regular hardcover and here's Fever Dream next to it. So it's, and then if you have the, like a paperback, a trade paperback, it is, it's tiny. It's like the, it's like in the miso soup from Riyun Mikami or Piercing from the same author. It's very tiny, very compact. It took me about two hours to read the entire book. It's 181 pages. If it was a normal size, like trade paperback, it would probably end up being anywhere between I'd say 100 and 120 pages. So they really, really use the font and the formatting style to make the book as long as it is. Normally that isn't a problem. The reason why I bring that up is you don't have enough length to actually get comfortable with the author's style. This reads and feels like a short story. It literally has no chapters. There's not even a page break in the entire book. It's all one continuous train of thought and that's cool. That's fine. She did a very good job of it, but I still had to stop in certain places and there were natural stops even the formatting didn't give you a natural stop. That brings me to my next problem with is the price of admission. I know why it's $16 for this tiny book. I understand why. I mean we're not dealing with Stephen King here, but we are dealing with a translated author. Stephen King charges, you know, 20 bucks for a tiny book like this or, you know, he always charges 20 bucks. It's never 16, but he charges that because he is a well-established author that people will buy no matter what. So they are going to take advantage of that. Here they're trying to pay the translator and the author and make money. Riverhead, yeah, Riverhead Books is trying to pay, trying to make back the money from the translator, trying to make back the money, trying to make the author some profits and trying to make profits themselves. The problem with that is it is not a $16 experience. I really hate to discount somebody's hard work, but I think a $10 paperback would have been a better option. Now mind you, on Amazon I got this for $13, I believe, usually with the translated novels, especially like Mitokami, whatever their whatever the price on the back of the book is, it's usually not too far away from that because they have to, because the book itself is so expensive they can't take too much of a loss on it. Whereas with, like let's say, let's just throw this out there, like a James Patterson book, if it's $10 you go over to Amazon it's five or six bucks. So I didn't pay the full 16, I paid 13, but still I feel like I didn't get my money's worth. And my friend Tracy, who I read this with, she basically, well not basically, she got it from the library and I kind of wish I had too. It is a good experience. It is great at giving you a feeling of dread. I just don't think the price of admission is right. So now let's go into the book itself. The, as I said, this book is very vague. I feel like I'm going to have to read it more than one time to understand it. The problem with that is I don't want to. I wasn't enthralled with the entire experience, but there is one scene in here with a boy and some ducks, that's all I'm going to tell you, that really bothered me. I was sitting there, it was on the edge of my seat, I guess on the edge of my bed because I was laying down, but this one scene, it locked me in. And I felt, it's one of those things where I felt like I couldn't escape the visuals. And anytime that happens, a book skyrockets for me. That's just like night film has a scene like that with a, with something on a bridge. And it stuck with me ever since I've read it. If you guys are a fan of the channel, you guys will have known, I've mentioned it numerous times. Now I have this scene with this boy and the ducks from Fever Dream. There's also a scene in Horuki Minakami's In the Miso Soup, which I just mentioned because of the size, that involves an ear in a restaurant. That bothered me also, but that bothered me in a different way than this bothered me. This, the scene in this book bothered me in the same way that Mercia Pacelle's night film bothered me. It's, there is nothing really overtly spoken. It's not said, hey look, here's this thing that you should fear or feel dread about. It just happens. And I think that alone is a sign of an immense talent. I would love to read Shweblin's Short Fiction because this whole book read a lot like Mariana Enrique's collection, The Things We Lost in the Fire. The reason why I love that one so much and I'm not really in love with this one is because this style fits a short story, whereas it doesn't fit a novel or a novella. I'm probably thinking this is about 20, 25,000 words if I'm doing my math correctly, which is nowhere near a novel. But also they call of Myse and Men a novel and that's not a novel either. It's only a hundred pages. Once again, this isn't to discount the author's work. It's just I don't feel that this style works for a novel or a longer work especially. Especially not a work without chapters. It felt, I didn't have any time where I felt comfortable. There were natural stops like changing locations and whatnot, but there was never a time where I felt comfortable stopping just my own OCD because there was no chapter breaks or page breaks. So at the end of the day, I'm going to give this three stars. The two problems I talked about, the price of admission first off, so definitely probably grab it if you have an extra audiobook code, if you can find it used, that kind of thing. I hate to say that for an author because they're not making any money off that. So the audiobook, if it goes on sale, grab it. I wouldn't pay more than $10 for the paperback myself. So the price of admission is going to knock off a star. The other thing that's going to knock off a star is the style in which it's written. It's written like a short story, but it goes on too long for a short story. The story itself doesn't go on too long, but it's too long for the style. There are too many questions. I got bogged down with trying to figure out if this meant something, if that meant something, or if it really was all just the problem that arises in the story. And again, I don't want to give you, I don't like spoilers, not even minute ones. But if you go into this book expecting just a dreadful, an experience full of dread, not dreadful, an experience full of dread, and that's pretty much it, then you should have a good time as long as you're not paying full price. So the vague style that works for short stories, not longer works. And the price of admission would be my only two things, but that's a star each I'm going to take off. So three stars. Have you read Fever Dream by Samantha Schwablin? If so, let me know down in the comments below. Did you like it? Did you hate it? What did you think? But until next time, I am Benny, you've been you. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!