Status
Collection
Publication
Description
Dream Angus comes to you at night and bestows dreams--you may spot him skipping across the hills, his bag of dreams by his side. Just the sight of him may be enough to make you fall in love, for he is also the god of love, youth, and beauty. Divine Angus is cherished by all but fated to love only the beautiful Caer, swan maiden from his own dreams. Crafting an ancient myth into a tale fabulously and irresistibly new, Dream Angus is the epitome of McCall Smith's prose, beautifully weighted, sensuous in its expression, deliciously serene. Five exquisite fables of modern dreamers unfold alongside Angus's search for Caer. Mesmerically weaving together the tales of the Celtic Eros and his contemporary alter egos, Alexander McCall Smith unites dream and reality, leaving us to wonder: what is life, but the pursuit of our dreams?… (more)
User reviews
It works out well in Dream Angus in large part because McCall Smith is
The Irish myth of Dream Angus, the god of love, dreams, and youth, is "...a cloud based upon a shadow based upon the movement of the breeze" (p xiv, hardcover edition). (Quite a trinity to get stuck with! Obstreperous, illogical, wilful things to be god of, all three.) McCall Smith gently deflects the breeze in his desired directions, and weaves the mythic base into more modern stories of Angus's doin's in this world. I don't think he did a brilliant job of this, but it's a tough technical challenge to tackle. I rated the book down a whole star for its heterosexism. It's explicit, and it rankled me.
But the lushness of Angus and of his beautiful self-aware selflessness in doing all the things he does for humanity...! Curmudges there a crusty old crab so dead to wonder and passion and love as to find this slightly arch, somewhat precious conceit anything other than glisteningly gorgeous?
Gods, I hope not. And I hope not to meet him/er, either. Go on, suspend disbelief and read this book. Soon. You'll be glad you took this vacation in the land of Celtic myth.
Yet unlike precursors in the Canongate Myth series, the connections to the myth that beget this novel seems to hold a tenuous thread to the modernity of mythic experience that Smith never truly expounds upon. The mythic story arc, encasing the modern short stories, of the Dream Angus could be excised and leave a fine collection of short stories. I felt disappointed that the first Celtic exploration did not delve as deeply nor as soundly as the Greek tales. The myth was relegated to the hastily surmised binding offering a tenative connective tissue to the short stories, rather than the wellspring from whence they sprung.
The prose is lovely and the characters have feeling to them, but I engaged this novel hoping for the resonance of mythos to carry me to the ineffable realms of imagination and creativity, but alas the flight stopped lightly at a pleasurable yarn to wile away an afternoon, leaving me grasping at a loose thread yet to be woven into cloth.
Sigh. I hate it when a book disappoints me, especially when I've convinced myself early on
Darn it, Alexander McCall Smith. Darn it.
Something was amiss. No, some things were amiss. I felt it the moment I held the book: it was light, too light, like it was lacking weight and substance and something else that mattered. I told myself, no, it's purposely light, because it's a book about Angus, the Celtic mythology's giver of dreams and a figure of youth and love, and it is only right that this re-telling should seem just as unburdened. And so I read, and I read some more, and no matter how much I tried it didn't feel right at all.
I tried to love you, Dream Angus, and when that didn't work I tried to at least like you. And maybe I did, a little bit, but once disappointed, you can never go back.
You were, for lack of a better term, just meh.
But there were redeeming qualities, the stuff that made me keep on reading. The five different stories (were they related, written without a sense of time?), despite leaving me wanting, were good. Angus was in each one of them, in various forms - an unwelcomed visitor, a shrink, and something else; my favorite was the uncle who threatened his nephew with nightmares (and maybe I liked it because it was different). There were such beautiful phrases and lines: "he drowned in the sky" and "but the gesture never came," "And he wanted to disbelieve what he had just heard because so few words could not end a world." Dream Angus was written - I hope you can forgive me if it sounds too schmaltzy- so dreamily.
And maybe that is why. It felt written in haste, in a haze, at times lucid and at times not. To put simply: "Sometimes the reality is not quite so appealing as the vision, distinctly so, but let's not be pessimistic."
PS. "Love and its disappointments were the bread and butter of people like him." Yes, there was love, plenty of it, and it all ended in disappointment. I'm so sad. So very, very sad. Sigh.
*I like apples, but I love me an orange. My analogy sucks. I'm sorry.
Originally posted here.
McAll Smith chooses the myth of Angus, a Celtic god of dream and love, of youth and beauty, a trickster with a benevolent
McAll Smith takes a two-pronged approach, alternating between chapters retelling the basic story of Angus with five fables set in modern times, each in their own way touching on an aspect of Angus’ life and story. Angus may – or may not – be seen in these chapters, but his touch is in them all. The effect works well, and while it’s less ambitious than some of the books in this series so far, it’s a gently done reworking that is full of McAll Smith’s typical charm.
I have to confess I’d grown a little weary of his style, and have skipped his last few books, but this reminded me why I liked him in the first place. A good addition to the Canongate Myths, which remains a series well worth following.
This tenth chapter I found very affecting with a lucid dream that resolves the mess a couple have
I might mention that dreams in this book function as an agent of change and not as a pyschological analysis of your life already lived, particularly the detritus from the previous day.
The tale is interspersed with fragments and dreams of more modern people. The final story was my favourite and is of a woman whose husband has been having an affair. She leaves him and enters therapy. One night she dreams that she stands up to her husband who then reaches out to her saying he had long hoped she would come but was too afraid to ask her. Soon after she drives past their old house and he comes over to her and reaches for her through the car window. It was a beautiful tale and a lovely way to finish this enchanting short novel.
This is one of my favourites so far in the series and I am definitely interested in reading more of McCall Smith's writing. Recommended for anyone with a passion for mythology or a damn good story.
Synopsis: It starts with the old celtic myth of Angust, starting with his parents and his birth, interspersed with Alexander McCall Smith's stories based on the
What did I like? I liked how it weaved back and forth from the time of myth to more modern life stories and how these new stories reflected the life of the Angus of old. Somehow, they enhanced the old tale, but I am not sure how and I feel this is a deeply personal feeling. Dreams feature in every tale and not all of them are happy ones, yet the book doesn't really have the melancholy atmosphere of the celtic storytelling tradition; at least not for me.
I felt the narrator of this book, Michael Page, captured its essence perfectly, being neither intrusive nor losing my attention at any point. A perfectly balanced performance for my commute to and from work.
What didn't I like? Way too short for me. This book was over in two days of commuting and this was disappointing as I wanted more.
Would I recommend it? Heartily to anyone who likes good storytelling and has a fondness for the older myths.
The book
I really enjoy Alexander McCall Smith’s writing style and I love myths, so I was very happy to read this book. Since both of the books I’ve read in this series were very enjoyable, I may branch out into the other installments as well.
I have a sneaking suspicion that McCall-Smith, just like James Doss, likes the sound of his own writer's voice, and thusly writes for the pure pleasure of hearing his own words.
I just didn't understand the point of the stories, they were short and left me wanting so very
So I rate this "Eh!"