Peter Behrens (1)

Behrens’s novel opens in 1846 in County Clare and concludes in 1847 in Montreal, focusing on the experiences of 15-year-old Fergus O’Brien. After his Irish peasant family dies of typhus during the potato blight, the youth finds himself first in the workhouse, then with a group of “bog boys”, orphaned children who are trying to survive (under the leadership of a young girl who dresses as a male and goes by the name Luke). When a raid on a colonist’s farm goes terribly wrong (i.e., show more turns into wholesale slaughter), Fergus is one of the very few survivors. Good with cattle, he makes himself useful to a drover who’s travelling to Dublin with a herd, and he eventually crosses from Ireland to Liverpool. Next, he spends time in a brothel, having been groomed by Shea, its young Irish madame, to be a “pearl boy” to homosexual clients. He departs that scene in good time, spending some weeks working railroad construction in Wales. There he forms an alliance with a wily young woman—the aptly named Molly, who’s a “railway wife” (basically a moll) to “Muck” Muldoon, a brutish railway foreman. Molly and Fergus together manage to gain passage on a “coffin ship” to Quebec. Tossed about by circumstance, bad and sometimes good luck, Fergus lands on his feet in the end.

Hmm. I was expecting more about the Irish famine than Behrens delivered. This is a very male telling: there’s tons of violence, plentiful descriptions of the maltreatment of animals and women, and the male experience of sex. (Honestly? I had more than enough of Fergus’s penis.) This is a rough picaresque novel with a melancholic streak. (Behrens regularly reminds us that his protagonist is haunted by his dead. Fergus is perpetually chiding himself to not look back but forward. I wish I could’ve felt more sympathy for the young man, but, as far as I’m concerned, Behrens fails in that department.) The work is episodic and long winded, and the author’s style is idiosyncratic even peculiar. (It took some getting used to.) Characterization is not a strength. The author waxes philosophical at times—he seems to want his reader to believe he’s communicating something profound about the human condition. To me, it was mostly just “words, words, words” and vague ones at that. I did complete the book. I also learned some things (but had to look quite a bit about typhus, workhouses, 19th-century railway projects, and ships).

I have mixed feelings about The Law of Dreams. Many have enjoyed the novel. Me, not so much. show less

The book is the reason why I'm in book groups. I had never heard of this book, or tis author, Peter Behrens, but after reading the story of how a vision of a landscape that none of the characters had ever seen carried them through the worst o times, I want to read more by this remarkable writer.

The story of Billy Lange and Karin Weinbenner who spend magical pre-World War I summers on the Weinbenner estate on the Isle of Wight. Karin's father is a rich industrialist who was one of the show more founders of the IG Farben chemical conglomerate and was made a Baron by the Kaiser, and Billy's father is his nautical racing manager. They are separated by the war, but then reunited in its aftermath at the Baron's palatial estate outside of Frankfort Germany. There Billy and Karin become fascinated by Karl May's tales of the American west - specialically the Llano Estacado - the high plains that stretch from West Texas into New Mexico. At first Billy thinks the place is one of fantasy. But then, when looking at an atlas, he discovers that it is a very real place indeed.

That's when I saw the words LLANO ESTACADO strewn across an otherwise empty map of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico and realized that the landscape of Winnetou actually existed, For me this was a great, wonderful shock - like finding God listed in the Frankfort telephone directory.

Billy and Karin grow up to lead very different lives: He as a salesman for IG Farben and she a rather flighty starlet in the German film industry. Their idea of the Llano Estacodo, however, remains with both of them and shines like a beacon as the terrible nightmare of Nazi Germany begins to unfold. Billy is the one who ends up being strong, while Karin has a bad time facing the truth and Billy finds he has to carry her to safety.. How this happens and how they each react to finally arriving at the land of their childhood fantasies makes for a glorious read. show less

This is a magnificant novel, vividly imagined, superbly executed. The story of Fergus O'Brien fleeing famine-ridden 1840s Ireland after losing his family to fever is one you will not soon forget. Behrens does not hold anything back. The horrors of a world that shows its inhabitants no mercy, the fears of people looking death in the eye, the crimes that good people must commit just to get through another day are there on every page. Fergus is a survivor. His strength comes from never show more regarding himself as a victim. The Law of Dreams won the Governor General's Award in 2006, and deserves that and all the other honours that came its way. show less

Se ia lumea super-dură a lui Dickens, se umflă cu steroizi și se adaugă foamete descrisă la fel de realist ca Holodomorul, furturi, crime, adultere, rebeliuni, sex, epurare etnică, cruzime față de animale, lipsă totală de umanitate sau milă... și iese o carte care te lasă cu un nod amar în gât.
Nota e undeva între 4 și 5, pentru că vreo 60% este incredibilă, dar ultimii 40% scade ritmul și devine mai puțin captivantă, deși oarecum mai sentimentală. Per total totuși, show more este deosebită și, deși nu o recomand celor mai slabi de inimă, o să mai caut cărți de Behrens. show less