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Title details for Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell - Available

Dreamers of the Day

A Novel

by Mary Doria Russell
Ann Marie Lee
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
“I suppose I ought to warn you at the outset that my present circumstances are puzzling,even to me. Nevertheless, I am sure of this much: My little story has become your history. You won’t really understand your times until you understand mine.” So begins the account of Agnes Shanklin, the charmingly diffident narrator of DREAMERS OF THE DAY. And what is Miss Shanklin’s “little story”? Nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East at the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, where Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell met to decide the fate of the Arab world–and of our own.
A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the Peace Conference convenes, Agnes enters into the company of the historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days at a hotel in Cairo, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. As Agnes observes the tumultuous inner workings of nation-building, she is drawn more and more deeply into geopolitical intrigue and toward a personal awakening.
With graceful and effortless prose, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East through a story that brilliantly elucidates today’s headlines. DREAMERS OF THE DAY is a memorable and passionate novel.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 11, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415945766
      • File size: 330095 KB
      • Duration: 11:27:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      You won't really understand your times until you understand mine, says Agnes, a 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, who speaks from the afterlife as she looks back at her first trip to Egypt in 1921. Narrator Ann Marie Lee's cheerful, friendly tones help listeners suspend disbelief when the dÄclassÄe Agnes is welcomed into the rarified world of T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, and other dignitaries. Relying heavily on coincidence, the story depicts Agnes as privy to the intricate events of the Cairo Peace Conference, which created the nations of Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Syria, and ostensibly, our current problems in the Middle East. Lee is ingenuous and chirpy as Agnes spends her days with Lawrence and the Churchills and her nights with Karl, a German spy. Lee makes the listening easy, but the book is a stretch. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 5, 2007
      Russell's enjoyable latest historical is told in the exuberant, posthumous voice (yes, it's narrated from the afterlife) of Agnes Shanklin, a 38-year-old schoolteacher from Cedar Glen, a town near Cleveland, Ohio. After the influenza epidemic of 1919 strikes down Agnes's family, a childless and unmarried Agnes settles the family estate, acquires financial independence and adopts an affable dachshund named Rosie. Accompanied by Rosie, Agnes travels to Cairo during the Cairo Peace Conference, where she befriends Winston Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia among other historical heavy hitters. She also falls in love with the charismatic Karl Weilbacher, a German spy whose interest in Agnes may have less to do with romance than Agnes will allow herself to believe. Agnes's travelogues, while marvelously detailed, distract from the increasingly tense romantic play between Agnes and Karl. When a more worldly-wise Agnes returns home, her life—first as an investor wrecked by the Depression and then a librarian until her death in 1957—remains low-keyed. Though the bizarre, whimsical ending doesn't quite gel, Russell (The Sparrow
      ; A Thread of Grace
      ) has created an instantly likable heroine whose unlikely adventures will keep readers hooked to the end.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Agnes Shanklin, the spinster at the center of this historical novel, narrates her own story from the afterlife. A schoolteacher who lost her family to influenza in 1919, Agnes acquires financial independence and decides to travel--to Egypt precisely, where she meets various important people of the period, such a T.E. Lawrence and Churchill. As a character, Agnes is both comic and pitiable, an effect that is hard for a narrator to achieve. Ann Marie Lee's careful delivery manages to capture both. The multiple imagined voices that intrude upon Agnes comprise an interior monologue of female voices that Lee carries off to great effect. A slight difficulty is the accent used for the German characters, which does not ring true. Overall though, Lee keeps the listener in tune with the narrative. M.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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