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From Amazon
Her family warned Maggie Glass never to tell the truth about them, but she does so anyway in narrating Opium Dreams, the lyrical debut novel by award-winning short story writer Margaret Gibson. Filled with imagery and insight, the novel movingly recounts an eccentric daughter's attempt to understand her estranged father. Maggie, a young writer plagued with psychological scars and prone to epileptic seizures, returns with her son to Toronto to help care for her father, Timothy, who is quickly slipping into the netherworlds of Alzheimer's disease. She tries to reconcile with her father, who had abandoned her when her life hit a crisis, by reconstructing the story of his life and her own as if they were a jigsaw puzzle of photographs and memories. Meanwhile, her father, separated from his daughter by an Alzheimer's coma, falls deeper into the tender and violent flashes of his memory, dreaming of his opium-smoking, fly-boy days in World War II.
Gibson masterfully evokes Timothy's complicated, dreamlike state of non-existence using simple prose. "Timothy Glass is traveling underwater. Black grottos. Glassy caverns. The water is murky and a deep, deep green. It is like looking through green smoke. Here and there he sees openings--flashes of his own life. Someone's life. Like snapshots. Rippling celluloid. Like a sleeping eye opening. A shutter lifted. Then closed again." By recalling the litany of hurts, events, and regrets that make a lifetime of experiences, Gibson carefully demonstrates one man's complexity and one daughter's unfaltering love for a parent. --Leah Eichler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“A finely crafted novel about memory, its complex layers and the power it holds over individual lives.…A haunting testimony to the power of love and the ties that bind.”
–Winnipeg Free Press
“Occasionally, you come across a novel that goes off in your head like a letter bomb, a warning from a stranger; a shock of tremendous intensity. Opium Dreams is such a book.…A brilliant and moving book that expresses a profound humanity.…”
–Ottawa Citizen
“Opium Dreams is like a broken sheet of glass on a summer beach: Glinting in the sun, reflecting clouds and sky, it is often beautiful, occasionally dazzling, but always painful to walk across.”
–Jane Urquhart, Globe and Mail
“The truths in this interwoven tapestry of lives are painfully close to the bone, yet the poetic vision is leavened with beauty, hope and mercy.”
–Financial Post
“She writes with sharp beauty and ruthless insight, but, above all, with love.…The novel moves beyond blame and despair to a noble vision that has always infused Gibson’s work, a vision of human courage, survival and hope.”
–Merilyn Simonds, Montreal Gazette
“This is a beautiful book.…Both wrenching and rewarding to read.”
–The Edmonton Journal
“The rich prose mirrors the complexity and power of family life, but it also gives the reader a sense of recognition for the personal paths we all must follow.”
–Kitchener-Waterloo Record
“Gibson writes in a voice that rings absolutely true.…”
–Books in Canada
“Although Margaret Gibson is not yet a household name among Canadian authors, she should be.…A powerful writer who skirts the edges of the macabre, Gibson’s beautifully, darkly lyrical prose causes the reader to pause, often with astonishment, as her luminous story unfolds.…”
–London Free Press
–Winnipeg Free Press
“Occasionally, you come across a novel that goes off in your head like a letter bomb, a warning from a stranger; a shock of tremendous intensity. Opium Dreams is such a book.…A brilliant and moving book that expresses a profound humanity.…”
–Ottawa Citizen
“Opium Dreams is like a broken sheet of glass on a summer beach: Glinting in the sun, reflecting clouds and sky, it is often beautiful, occasionally dazzling, but always painful to walk across.”
–Jane Urquhart, Globe and Mail
“The truths in this interwoven tapestry of lives are painfully close to the bone, yet the poetic vision is leavened with beauty, hope and mercy.”
–Financial Post
“She writes with sharp beauty and ruthless insight, but, above all, with love.…The novel moves beyond blame and despair to a noble vision that has always infused Gibson’s work, a vision of human courage, survival and hope.”
–Merilyn Simonds, Montreal Gazette
“This is a beautiful book.…Both wrenching and rewarding to read.”
–The Edmonton Journal
“The rich prose mirrors the complexity and power of family life, but it also gives the reader a sense of recognition for the personal paths we all must follow.”
–Kitchener-Waterloo Record
“Gibson writes in a voice that rings absolutely true.…”
–Books in Canada
“Although Margaret Gibson is not yet a household name among Canadian authors, she should be.…A powerful writer who skirts the edges of the macabre, Gibson’s beautifully, darkly lyrical prose causes the reader to pause, often with astonishment, as her luminous story unfolds.…”
–London Free Press
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting...,
By
This review is from: Opium Dreams (Paperback)
I am an avid fan of Canadian writers and try to read these as often as possible, especially if I hear/see a review (CBC radio is the most often source). This was an unexpected but interesting read primarily about a father-daughter relationship. The father is spiraling into some kind of dementia and the daughter is trying to figure out her relationship with him, past, present and for the future. She is/was the "different" one among her siblings, often lost in her own world but so is her father. I prefer happy endings but, as is the case with a parent with dementia, this is not the norm. The story did help me re-frame some aspects of my relationship with my own father not that there was any great resolution of angst but it did provide some helpful insights. This father, like mine, served in World War II and came back a changed man. I will read it again and pass it on to friends who look for substance in their reads.
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