Dreaming in Color - Hardcover

Allen, Charlotte Vale

3.82

368 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385419457 ISBN 13: 9780385419451

Publisher: Doubleday, 1993

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When an abused wife seeks refuge from her husband in their home, Alma and Eva find that the woman's entrance into their house has begun to haunt their dreams and private thoughts and dredge up painful old memories. 20,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo.

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From AudioFile:

Working as a practical nurse, a battered wife flees with her daughter and finds refuge in the home of a writer and her invalid aunt. This tale of four unique women living under one roof is a blend of pathos and suspense. Flashbacks fill in each woman's story. Gantly does an excellent job reading this novel; her pacing is exactly right, and the vocal characterizations distinctive. The audio presentation makes the issues and characters even more gripping than they are in the written text. S.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews:

Veteran novelist Allen (Leftover Dreams, 1992, etc.) now offers an ultimately feel-good tale about the successful rehabilitation of a severely battered woman who, with her child, is aided by three generations of women. Bobby knows she must escape vicious husband Joe before he kills their six-year-old daughter, Penny. With her bruised and swollen face, she drives frantically from their upstate New York home to a well-to-do Connecticut enclave--and providentially is taken on as a nurse/companion to elderly stroke victim Alma. (Alma is intrigued by bright Penny, but the child's chatter may be wearying to the reader--and Bobby, who regularly uses ``real'' as an adverb but who admits to reading all of Dickens, shifts in and out of focus.) Both Alma and her novelist daughter Eva have doubts about the two, but Bobby is remarkably able, and it's soon obvious that both Bobby and Penny are essential to Alma's health and spirits. Eva, meanwhile, in disturbing reveries (all characters tip the cards of personal histories at one point) comes to grips with traumatic memories of the death of a dear friend, by her husband, and with internal battles concerning the claims of art vs. moola for commercial fiction. Eva tends to be curt with Bobby, but then her college-age daughter, Melissa, arrives for Christmas, and before long all the women are intensely important to one another. And there are good men--good, good men--around. Just when the happy household seems solidified, however, in comes Joe--armed, dangerous, and lunatic.... A cautionary tale, but with a cheerful domestic overcast as a victim is given back her life, and there's plenty of information concerning the battered-wife syndrome. Topical and, oddly, commercially comfy. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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