Dreams Underfoot

Dreams Underfoot
Author: Charles de Lint
Rating: 4.0/5.0




This novel is a collection of short stories by Charles de Lint. All of the stories are a taking places at different points in time (with no emphasis on the passage of time really) but all are set in a town called Newford. Newford seems to be a medium to large sized city least in a world that is very near to ours. I pictured the city to be set in Canada (the author is from Ottawa) so I decided to try to find out for this post. I found the answer in an online interview
with the author, to which he answered a question about Newford by saying:

"Interestingly, Canadian readers tend to think of Newford as an American city, while Americans usually think of it as Canadian. No surprise really, I suppose, since it has elements of both."

So there were many different stories here, different even in how I would categorize them. A couple are a little creepy to me, some tend toward romance, some towards adventure, and some are re-telling of old folk tales. One thing they all have in common though, is the running theme:

there is magic in the world, you just have to know where/how to look for it

De Lint really drives this point home numerous times, especially in the stories in the first half of the novel. I was wondering if I was going to get annoyed by the preachiness of this mantra, but it evens out after the halfway mark, and I enjoyed the last half, and the whole novel really. And I did get into his mindset by the end. I think reading a second De Lint book will be easier, I find I need a little time to get into sync with some authors.

The short stories I enjoyed the most:

• Romano Drom - punks, gypsies, destinies and folklore
• Winter was Hard - violet-eyed strangers, winter snow, and frying bacon - if that isn't an interesting setting I don't know what would be
• Our Lady of the Harbour - a re-telling of the The Little Mermaid
• But for the Grace Go I - a more serious fictional person who lives on the streets.
  

Another thing I liked while was I reading is that most of the stories are littered with references to terms, artists, authors, musicians, cultures, etc... Some of these I had heard of before but others I got to look up, which is always interesting (but not necessary to appreciate the stories).

Here's a sampling:

• Holograms in the Haunted Mansion Disney World
• Bigfoot
• Gypsies
• Natalie Merchant, musician
• Mucha, artist/art style
• Pre-Raphaelite, art style
• Norwegian Sami people
• Cicely Mary Barker, artist famous for "flower fairies"
• Terri Windling, artist, essayist
• O.B. Hardison, poet, teacher, essayist, and author
• Jaws
• Mendelssohn "Concert in E Minor", composer, musician
• The Jolly Green Giant
• Monet, artist
• Botticelli, artist
• Andrew Lang, poet, novelist
• Busking - playing in public for tips
• Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

As a first look into the works of Charles de Lint, I'm definitely ready to check out some others. This novel is part of my Once Upon a Time II challenge, for my folklore category novel.