The Dream Room

The Dream Room is one of those pleasant little novels about a quaint little family and a simple little storyline with big ideas behind it. David is a 12-year-old boy who likes to cook. He cooks for his parents every chance he gets, and he reads cookbooks as if they were novels. His father was a pilot in the big one and his mother was a nurse. Surprise surprise, they meet and fall in love when the father crashes and the mother takes care of him. At the novels start, the father is unemployed and the mother loses her job. With no source of income, the boy comes up with an idea. Living above a toy shop, he decides they should buy model airplanes, build them together, and sell them for profit. What follows is a touching story of a family show more coming together to make it through a tough time in their lives.

Unfortunately, towards the end of the novel I think the author gets a little too philosophical for his own good. The story is left incomplete after a "mysterious event" and the reader is left wondering what on earth just happened. The final chapter is very cryptic and even after mulling it over for awhile I'm still not 100 percent sure if I've wrapped my head around it properly.

Still, I really enjoyed this little book. It has given me a lot to think about and, had I read it with a group of people, would probably have created a lot of discussion. Definitely a book I would recommend to others. show less

This short novel is part coming-of-age story, part family history, and part exploration of how we tell stories. The basic is gist of the story is about a 12-year-old boy whose father is a former aviator whose life is directionless since an airplane crash and his mother is a nurse who loses her job. David decides to "save" his family by having them all build model airplanes for sale in the toy shop below their home. David also has a passion for cooking that is encouraged by a friend of the family. I feel like I missed something towards the end of the book as there is a "big event" but I can't figure out what happened. I'm not alone as other reviews mention this as well. Nevertheless this is a well-written philosophical and dreamy book.

Published as 'Modellfliegen' in dutch, model airplanes I guess, I think it will be a novella requiring a second read quite soon. It starts off as quite a charming story about how a small family find an alternative means of making a living, but that slides into something more complex involving memory and history. I don't think I quite caught everything. On some levels this little book almost works as a volume of short stories. The atmosphere of intimacy at times is quite powerful, and the sensation of being a child in an adult world, and there are some undercurrents I want to revisit.