Dream Sequence: A Novel - Hardcover

Foulds, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374143706 ISBN 13: 9780374143701

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

Synopsis

Adam Foulds, the award-winning author of The Quickening Maze, pens a stunning and terrifying vision of the damage done between a fan and a celebrity in Dream Sequence―where the borders between inner and outer life have been made porous in a world full of flickering screens large and small.

Henry became famous starring in The Grange, a television drama beloved by mothers and wives, and whose fans speak about the characters as though they were real people . . . yet Henry dreams of escaping the small screen. An audition for a movie directed by a highly respected Spanish auteur holds the promise of a way forward. Whether holed up in his apartment eating monkish meals of rice and steamed vegetables or snorting cocaine at desert parties in Doha, Henry’s awareness of his own image, of his relative place in the world, is acute and constant.

But Henry has also―unwittingly―become an important part of the life of recently divorced Kristin. He appears repeatedly on the television in her beautiful, empty Philadelphia house, and her social media feeds bring news of his London home, his family. What Kristin wants is simply to get as close to him in real life as she has in her fandom.

About this title

About the Author

Adam Foulds is a poet and novelist. He was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013 and the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets in 2014. He is the recipient of a number of literary awards, including The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Costa Poetry Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature, the Encore Award, and the European Union Prize for Literature. His novel The Quickening Maze was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2009.

Review

"The dream Adam Foulds weaves in this scintillating novel is gradually revealed, with grace and subtlety, to be an especially timely form of waking nightmare―but a nightmare so precise, and often beautiful, that one comes to prefer it, in some ways, to dull reality. Read this book." ―John Wray, author of Godsend

"Dream Sequence succeeds as a narrative thanks to Foulds's prose. He doesn't waste a single word, is frequently very funny, insightful and surprising. And he does a marvelous job of making us wonder who loves Henry the most, Kristin or Henry―and which of these possibilities is the most alarming consequence of celebrity." ―Julie Klam, The New York Times Book Review

"Foulds's novel is fun, smart, and tense, part psychological drama about media-driven obsession and part razor-sharp social critique." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Reminiscent of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, this wryly observed story of a self-absorbed actor and a pathological fan documents the tragic consequences of a misguided love." ―Barbara Love, Library Journal (strarred review)

"Adam Foulds’s fourth novel, Dream Sequence, is an exquisitely concocted, riveting account of artistic ambition and unrequited love verging on obsession . . . One finishes the book wishing the dream were longer." ―Philip Womack, The Spectator

"Beautifully written . . . A novel about loneliness and obsession in contemporary life, set in hotels and airports, sterile apartment blocks, gyms and yoga classes." ―Alice O'Keefe, New Statesman

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0374143706
• ISBN 13: 9780374143701
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224