Thursday 14 January 2016

The Dream Room - Marcel Moring

     This very short book (118 pages) is a beautifully put together novella, and for those of you who love a well constructed sentence, well written and leaving you wanting more, this may well be a good pick for you. Translated from the Dutch but with no acknowledgement of the translator, it looks as though he did the translation himself.
    It's a simple story - 12 year old David, a budding chef, is the only child.  He and his parents find themselves building plastic aeroplanes after his father has quit yet another job on the same day that his mother has been fired. This will keep the roof over their heads until other jobs turn up and they are relatively happy doing this for a while.   Then a friend from the past (an English ex-spy) turns up and here the book turns into a little mystery.
    Did so enjoy the read, until the last chapter.  David is now 40 and his current life is the subject of that last chapter - which, sadly for me, rather spoilt that lovely read because this seemed so much like an add on, and in fact it seems unnessary to the story to have it there at all. Still, I didn't write the book, and the author wanted that last chapter in, so who am I to say he was wrong?  Worth seeking out though - and I leave it to you to decide whether you read that last few pages or not.  The prose is lovely though.
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