Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin: a complex, terrifying tale

This slim volume is best consumed in a single sitting, preferably with the lights on and the doors locked tight.

My Spanish-speaking friends have been telling me about Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin for a couple of years now. Though she’s only in her 30s, her novels and short stories have won international awards and been translated into more than 20 languages.

She is, in short, rather a big deal. But until recently all I could find of her writing in English were a few translations online. The stories were wonderful, though: spare, unsettling and primed with a dark power.

But with the translation of Schweblin’s 2014 debut novel Fever Dream, it seems the English-speaking world is starting to take notice. The book has been longlisted for the 2017 Man International Booker Prize, thanks in part to the brilliant work of American translator Megan McDowell, who has previously translated Latin American writers such as Alejandro Zambra.

For such a short novel, Fever Dream is a complex and multi-layered construction, and resists easy categorisation. It’s simultaneously a metaphysical ghost story, a work of eco-criticism and a meditation on the terror of maternal love.

The novel is comprised of an unbroken dialogue between two speakers: a woman named Amanda and a child named David, who are not mother and son. Outside of that Schweblin ­reveals little else, at least initially.

The reader knows the conversation takes place in a rural hospital ward and that Amanda is stricken with a mysterious condition. “I’m going to die in a few hours. That’s going to happen isn’t it? It’s strange how calm I am.” But this is less of a deathbed confession than an inquisition. David hectors and prods Amanda, helping her to understand the circumstances that have led to her illness. “We’re looking for worms,” he says, “something very much like worms, and the exact moment when they touch your body for the first time.” In David’s childish register (notated in italics), the usage of ‘‘worms’’ is slightly misleading, but it speaks to the terrible mystery at the core of the novel.

As Amanda tries to recall what has happened to her, a second narrative emerges. She remembers she had visited this town in the countryside for a holiday with her daughter. There she met a local woman named Carla, David’s mother.

Carla recounted an occasion in which David drank from a contaminated stream. To save his life, she took him to a local healer who attempted a “migration”, removing half of David’s soul and replacing it with half of another person’s. “If we could move David’s spirit to another body in time, then part of the poison would also go with him.” As Carla and Amanda’s stories twist around each other, the significance of David’s presence at her bedside begins to become clear. After the migration his parents became afraid of him, locking him in his room at night. This is a mystery where every character is enmeshed, and by the end of the novel we realise David has taken it upon himself to bear witness to the insidious contagion that has infected him, Amanda, and many members of the town.

But a certain narrative instability permeates Fever Dream. As the novel progresses, Amanda’s storytelling becomes confused, at times incoherent. Neither she nor Carla is the most reliable of narrators. And Amanda’s story is further complicated by David’s interjections. “Those are stories my mother tells,” he says at one point, after Amanda tells him of his migration. “Neither you nor I have time for this.”

Fever Dream is couched in surreal sensibilities, but the terror that Schweblin creates has a distinctly human quality. It’s the terror of losing control, it’s about the terrible things people do for the ones they love. But as Amanda’s memory stumbles slowly towards the present and she begins to comprehend her impending death, she starts to assert control over her narrative. “I’m the one who decides what to focus on in the story now.”

Though there will be no salvation for her, she has been able to find the words to describe what happened, to bear witness.

The title of Schweblin’s book is certainly descriptive, but Fever Dream can also be read as a direct instruction from author to reader. This slim volume is best consumed in a single sitting, preferably with the lights on and the doors locked tight. It’s a compulsive read, and a genuinely terrifying one. It reminded me of reading ghost stories as a young child, being scared witless, but never wanting it to end.

Dominic Amerena is a writer and critic.

Fever Dream

By Samanta Schweblin

Translated by Megan McDowell

Oneworld, 192pp, $19.99 (HB)