Reality and Dreams

Name: Reality and Dreams
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Muriel Spark
ISBN: 9781456124212

Author: Muriel Spark

Narrator: Jenny Sterlin

Unabridged: 4 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 11/11/2011

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Award-winning British author Dame Muriel Spark is internationally renowned for her witty and engaging tales of life. Short and sophisticated, Reality and Dreams follows the career of self-centered, middle-aged film director Tom Richards. As he turns colorful incidents from his life into glittery, cinematic fiction, his foreboding dreams become all too real. Tom is passionately directing his latest film when he falls from a crane on the set. Awaking in a semi-conscious fog in a hospital room, he suddenly must deal with a comic, surreal procession of doctors, nurses, and out-of-work relatives. In a drugged daze, he dreams of ways to change his life. But some of his hazy visions come true as he recovers, causing Tom's real world to unravel into a distorted soap opera. Muriel Spark is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and winner of the prestigious David Cohen British Literature Prize. Her tantalizing story, Reality and Dreams, won the Arts Council Spring Book Award. With narrator Jenny Sterlin's expert pacing, all of the delicious surprises and the unsettling wisdom in this dark, contemporary comedy burst from the pages.

About Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was the author of over twenty novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, as well as critical biographies, radio plays, children’s books, poetry, and short-story collections. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1993 and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1996.

Reviews

Goodreads review by MJ on May 26, 2016

A featureless effort from the mistress of the concise comedic novel. A cast of unlikeable twerps swan around having automatic affairs, and an unloved daughter flees the family bosom for a few months, to scant interest. Paper-thin plot and half-arsed characters, coupled with an earnest tone (as a vic......more

Goodreads review by John on December 05, 2021

Tom Richards is a famous English film director married to his millionaire wife Claire. They have a open marriage to the anger of their daughter Marigold. The other daughter Cora is a beautiful but shallow woman. The story revolves around Tom after a serious accident that takes him several months to......more

Goodreads review by Baz on April 01, 2024

The great novelist Penelope Fitzgerald reviewed Reality and Dreams in 1997, and said that Spark saw the novel as a kind of game. Almost all her novels—her career spans six decades—are overtly meta, and at heart prod and challenge and dissect ‘the whole business of truth and invention.’ She does it a......more

Goodreads review by Randy on June 08, 2022

I have now read all of Muriel Spark’s twenty two novels! I’ve already decided I will start at the beginning and read them all again if I live long enough. I should say I have read all twenty two of her fictions because I have long said that while they are fascinating, engrossing and worth reading, t......more

Goodreads review by Mighty Aphrodite on February 28, 2025

Tom vive in un mondo in cui la realtà e i sogni si confondono, si disperdono e si ricreano, come una forma di creta calda e scivolosa sotto mani inesperte e fantasiose. Anche il volto di una ragazza visto per un momento in un camping francese si può trasformare in un nuovo mondo, in una storia compl......more