Week 13 (1): Fever Dream (Schweblin)

 Hi everyone! I am so shocked that our last week is here! I hope that everyone has had a really good term and wishing you all the best of luck on any exams or papers that you guys have left! This week I chose to read “Fever Dream” by Samanta Schweblin. I personally, like Jon briefly mentioned in the lecture, found it so disorienting. The lack of chapters and context within the book made me really struggle to keep reading and follow along. However, that being said, I think I still enjoyed it? Honestly, the whole time while reading and then after listening to Jon’s lecture I just kept thinking about this film course I’m in this term. The course is about the Anthropocene in Asian and Australian cinema, and I felt like a lot of the films that I watched in this course reflect this disorienting experience, whether through narrative or visuals. 

Particularly there was this one super low-budget horror film titled Three Days of Darkness. The majority of the film was almost in complete darkness so you are forced to use your other senses in order to make out what is happening in the film, which truly made it more horrifying to watch. A lot of the films I have watched in that course have been focused on this disabling of one sense in order to heighten another. I think that in some ways the book also did this. Although we can not smell the areas that the characters are in, we are still able to decipher how Amanda and David are understanding the world around them. From the very beginning, talking about the worms, I was genuinely confused. No introduction of the characters, no description of the setting, or even a chapter to know that this really was the beginning of the book. Added to Jon’s lecture about the history of genetic modification and sickness that came from soybeans in South America, the lack of context made this book frustrating. However, as it went on and we followed Amanda as she tried to navigate what truly was going on and what was causing the sickness, we never truly got the answer from her. I think that this lack of context, although frustrating, did make the book feel a little scarier. Just like the film I watched, which literally stripped the context away from us, this book just decided to leave it out, forcing us as the reader to have a blank slate on the situation and attempt to figure out what is going on alongside the characters. 


As for my very last question of the term, how does Amanda being a mother also add to the uneasiness and fear that comes along with the story?


Comments

  1. JonApril 11, 2023 at 8:29 AM

    "A lot of the films I have watched in that course have been focused on this disabling of one sense in order to heighten another. I think that in some ways the book also did this."

    This is an interesting thought. There's a lot about sense and sensation in this book, as well as the limits of what you can perceive. And it's also a bit like a detective story, as you have to piece together a broader picture based upon the small clues and signs that are everywhere around, but which you don't necessarily notice at first.

    Moreover, I'd say that this is definitely what we might call the Anthropocene, as here even nature isn't fully natural any more, having been changed by human intervention.

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