Review: The Art of Effective Dreaming

By Gillian Polack, Satalyte Publishing, 2015

A Review By Kyla Lee Ward

As Stephen King is wont to say, "… the difference between humour and horror is it stops being funny when it starts happening to you." (most recently, at the International Festival of Authors PEN Gala, October 24, 2013). In her latest novel, Gillian Polack shepherds us gently past the point where Fay's dreams stop being fantasy and become utterly terrifying.

Fay is a twenty-something public servant, living in Canberra, Australia. She is single, likes reading and used to play the flute, but all that is boring. So deadly dull she scarcely spares it a second thought. Fay has become adept at the mental discipline people call fantasising, daydreaming or pathworking, depending on how seriously they take it. And Fay is coming to realise that she must take her little trips to this nameless, medieval-style town with its looming castle very seriously indeed.

"This world is a construct. The reality is the street at night. There is a big moon overhead, not a sun. I'm not asleep and this is not real. So where were the lampposts and the pavement? Why am I running? And why is the grass growing?"

This is a book about assumptions. About reality, for starters, but also about need, duty and happiness. Is an act that would be condemned in reality acceptable in a fantasy, when after all, no one really gets hurt? How much of a person's identity resides in their environment? From such questions, a complex and intricate narrative is spun, that interrogates the whole concept of fantasy (both the literary genre and the activity) without mercy...

For the complete review, see here.