1. Dreamers of the Day

by Mary Doria Russell

I found this in a used book store in Asheville, NC while killing time and waiting for everything else to open up. In Asheville's downtown, even the breakfast places don't open till 9. Everything else seems to open at 11 AM or even later. Color me aghast. Living in a major metropolis has evidently warped my concept of appropriate opening times.

In any event, there I am floating around and not feeling terribly reader-ish and I find this book with an artsy-fartsy photograph of the pyramids with WWI era woman strolling around on it. It looks like the worst kind semi-romantic literary shmaltz and the only reason I picked it up is because I happen to know who Mary Doria Russell is.

Mary Doria Russell was trained as an anthropologist and is responsible for writing The Sparrow and A Thread of Grace. The first is one of the most chilling imaginings of human first contact with alien intelligence that I've ever read and the second is a historical novel about the Jews who fled to Italy during WWII. Both books were masterfully well written and heartrendingly depressing. Russell gets enough cred to get me past a dubious looking cover.

I'm glad I gave it a shot. Dreamers of the Day is set in the time immediately after WWI and the influenza outbreaks which is a time period that many schools gloss over. It's strange to think that a relatively common disease that is generally regarded as an inconvenience once swept through world leaving corpses in the streets and we've more or less forgot. Bigger worries I guess with WWI raging on. In any case, Russell's main character, Agnes, decides to take the opportunity immediately postwar to use the money her now entirely deceased family has left her to take a trip to Egypt and in doing so manages to meet Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, and Gertrude Bell. Quite the cast.

The book is typically well written but a little slow starting and the end is a little...odd. I've come to the conclusion that Russell, has a hard time dealing with loose ends at the end of a story and resorts to somewhat bizarre vignettes. I can forgive it though in view of the otherwise brilliant prose.