Lincoln's Dreams: A Novel

It's hard to figure on how to write a review for this book without giving anything away. Suffice it to say, for the short hook, that this is a book that no reader should go without. Connie Willis takes a hard theme and makes it relatable, understandable, and devastatingly personal for any reader who's willing to accept the book to start with.I'm honestly amazed by some of the negative reviews that the novel gets. I can understand them, to a point--if you've read Connie Willis before, you may be somewhat distressed by the almost unbroken seriousness of tone and story in Lincoln's Dreams. This is not funny or amusing in the way that her better accepted stories are (Doomsday Book, for example, manages to maintain a sense of humor throughout the middle of its several hundred pages). Before you pick up this book, you need to understand that Connie doesn't go out of her way to make the story she's telling easy for you.Nor should she, if you ask me. I'm willing to go along with everything that Willis lays before me in this story, including the sometimes difficult to understand characters. You need to know, though, that they are difficult to understand not because they are flat, but because they are decidedly human (and real people can sometimes be some of the most two dimensional you will ever meet, and I'm including literary figures in that analysis). There are a couple of points in the story where you have to grant Willis some liberties, but for the most part the characters are internally consistent and understandable.The biggest obstacle that this story has is probably its theme--the destructive power of love. However, I was amazed to find when I took some time to sit back and think about the book that the author had managed not only to relate this fundamental theme to me, but that she had done so without the vitriolic hatred of the emotion that many who would try to address it seem to fall into. Indeed--the story shows the terrible destruction that love in all its forms can bring upon a person while still maintaining its desirability and its essential goodness. At the end of the story, you feel the loneliness that the lack of love brings, and I believe that this loneliness is the ultimate expression of the theme that Willis is trying to examine.And the fact that she was able to evoke this in me and show these things to me is what ultimately marks this novel as a triumph for me. I'm not normally one to be emotionally affected by a story, but Connie Willis has always managed to pull my strings, and nowhere more than in this story. This is not a happy story (though it is not without wit, as some would have you believe) but it is an important one, and a lesson that any person can draw. In short, it is a transcendant work that may very well be looked back on as one of the best novels of the last half of the century, and I don't throw that praise around lightly. At the very least, you should at least give the book a try.

Connie Willis has an amazing talent for building tension in a story. The tension in Lincoln's Dreams builds and builds and builds until I felt every nerve was raw. Then, she delivered a last line that hit me so hard, I lost my breath, as if someone had hit me in the solar plexus. I immediately had to read it again, just to see all the clues I hadn't caught the first time. This book shows the pain of war and love. You see bits of the Civil War through the dreams of the female protaganist, and then you, just like her, have to try to decipher their meaning. It leaves you emotionally spent. The book haunted me for months after. Connie Willis is an artist... If I were stuck on a desert island, yet somehow knew it would happen so I could pack for it, I would take all of Connie Willis' writings and everything written by Charles Dickens. They would keep me entertained and happy for years to come. This was a truly satisfying read.

I've enjoyed everything by Connie Willis that I've ever read . . . so how did I miss ever reading her first novel? I dunno, but I'm glad I noticed. This is a beautifully conceived, quietly lyrical story of love and loyalty. Jeff Johnston is a young Civil War researcher working for an historical novelist, who meets Annie, who has been having Robert E. Lee's dreams (so the general can get some rest), and he becomes her protector and facilitator. And he eventually finds out just how he himself figures in her dreams. The anxiety and tension build so slowly, you won't notice at first, but by the time you're three-quarters through the book, you won't be able to put it down, not for a minute. And the tragic closing line is the most literally stunning I've ever read. Her grasp of the relevant minutiae of the War is flawless, too. There's a reason Connie has won six Hugos and six Nebulas, as well as the Campbell Award for this very book.

In Lincoln's Dreams, Connie Willis does not portray the world of science fiction so much as the world of perceived reality. Her protagonist is Jeff, a historian, and through him the book explains the strange attraction between people and history. In seems that in some way Jeff wishes to understand himself and his relationships as being parallel to the characters and relationships which exist during the time period he is studying, the Civil War. Willis makes this interesting and usually hidden character trait visible by adding an ironic twist to the story: there really does seem to be a fantastic connection between the Civil War and Jeff (and his romantic interest, Annie's) lives. As Jeff and Annie try to figure out if they are Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, or one of a half dozen other Civil War characters, Willis beautifully and subtely explores how people define and order the murkier aspects of their lives. As a result, the book is both haunting and uplifting, deep and entertaining, and utterly real.

Lincoln's Dreams was the first book I read by Connie Willis, and the best by far. It is the story of a young Civil War historian who is pulled into the dream world of a disturbed young woman. The tragic story of the Civil War is deftly entertwined with the tragic story of that young woman Ms. Willis did an outstanding job of researching the Civil War. Her story is rich in texture and detail. But the most extraordinary thing about this book is the incredible tension she builds with the progression of the story. This quiet little story generated the kind of menacing anxiety usually reserved for spy thrillers! I have read everything Connie Willis has written, and greatly enjoyed most of it, but Lincoln's Dreams remains my favorite of her books