This is not a book I would have chosen as recently as a month ago. I am not a civil war buff. I recently became interested in the work of Connie Willis, and I found this and another of her novels at a library book sale in Newport News, so I snagged them, along with a bag full of other books.The following evening I was feeling ill. I grabbed this book out of the bag for temporary distraction from my pain, nausea, and alternating hot and cold sweats, and it drew me in immediately. Nine pages…then sixteen…then thirty two…and before I knew it I was halfway through reading this novel. I forgot all about being sick, and, really, what better recommendation is there for a book? But, read on….This is not a mystery, crime, action, or noir novel. However, it was interesting to me that Willis used several things that could appear in a noir novel, such as prescient dreams, research to solve a mystery, a damsel in distress, and a rescuer for the damsel, unrequited love, and an unethical psychiatrist drugging and bedding his patient, plus a kick in the gut ending.Broun is a civil war novelist obsessed with Lincoln’s dreams. His research assistant, Jeff, meets a woman named Annie who appears to be dreaming the visions of someone involved in the civil war. Annie’s dreams are a mix of fact, symbolism, point of view, history, and current happenings. Jeff spirits Annie away from her psychiatrist, Richard. They leave D.C. and go to Fredericksburg to hide out. After that, the novel is really a series of sightseeing, followed by Jeff watching over Annie as she dreams and/or sleepwalks, Annie reveals her dream, they eat in a diner, then more sightseeing. This goes on for most of the book while Richard keeps leaving messages for Jeff to call him immediately. This book is very dated now. It was written before cell phones or smart phones, before PC’s, before tablets, etc. There is a convoluted answering machine system at Broun’s house. Jeff does research in libraries, using books and writing notes. Quaint, right?The writing is smooth and easy. I found characters I was interested in, and civil war trivia that fascinated me. Especially about the prescient dreams Abraham Lincoln is reported to have had prior to his assassination. President Lincoln is supposed to have told people he dreamed of waking in the White House to the sound of crying, which he followed to the East Room. There he found a coffin containing a figure draped in black cloth. He asked the guard who was dead, and the guard replied, “The President” (this dream has been reported in a number of different sources, and was not a fiction created for this novel). The paragraphs of civil war trivia that open each chapter are interesting. The occasional excerpts from Broun’s novel we are ”treated to”, are not interesting, and I found them tedious.However, much like Mickey Spillane, the final line of the entire novel is the kick in the gut ending. I could tell you what the line is and it would not spoil the book. I won’t, though. In fact, this book is so well written, you could find a copy, open it to the last page, read the last line and it would still mean nothing to you without having read the entire novel. Willis makes you feel for these characters, and it’s cool how she builds so much subtle tension that you don’t even notice until that final kick in the gut line.In my opinion, not a great book, but a diverting and easy read. You can enjoy this book without any knowledge whatsoever, or even interest in, the American civil war. This is not a novel about the civil war. This is a book about people and how they affect us. Connie Willis makes her characters affect us.In 1988, this novel won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Lincoln's DreamsThis is book with a divided fan base. On GoodReads most of the reviewers love Connie Willis but few seem to love Lincoln's Dreams. This review is the result of a second read for me. Life many others Connie Willis is one of my favorite writers. I've read six of her other novels, five of them part of the Oxford time travel series, and all were entertainingly brilliant. Part of Willis's great virtue as a writer, especially as a science fiction writer, is that her works are deeply humane. Indeed, the Oxford series seems to use the time travel device as more of an interesting convention to get characters into even more interesting situations. Lincoln's Dreams was Willis's first novel and it is, to my mind, a even greater achievement than the succeeding novels which have won so many Hugo and Nebula awards. I don't mean with this comment that it is a better novel than the ones that followed but rather that it is, in my opinion, hugely imaginative. The time travel stories are, in one sense, merely time travel tales, however, they are brilliantly rendered with deep characterizations and a real sense of the past times presented. Lincoln's Dreams is a strange and different kind of tale concerned with the nature of dreams, of who dreams, and what if someone else was dreaming your dreams.The story begins with Broun, a successful writer of Civil War fiction and his researcher Jeff. One night Jeff's college roommate Ricard, now a doctor of psychiatry, shows up with Annie, a young woman in his care. Jeff is immediately attracted to her even though there is clearly something wrong with her. As the story develops she tells Jeff that her problems are her dreams. She then describes them to Jeff and, strangely enough, he recognizes people and places she has dreamt. The two then go on the run, escaping from Richard, who wants to treat the dreams so that they will go away. What results is a tour of several Civil War historic sites and some very wild dreaming. It's presented in an accessible but mysterious style so that the reader is never sure exactly whose dreams they are. this is not really science fiction in a strict sense but there are elements here that will appeal to both science and literary fiction fans.
What do You think about Lincoln's Dreams (1992)?
Lincoln's Dreams could have been a better book. We begin with an intriguing idea. An author of Civil War era books wants to write about Lincoln's dreams which told him weeks before he was assassinated that he was going to die. His researcher begins to take up with a woman who is having very vivid and historically accurate dreams from Robert E. Lee's perspective. But why, and should she allow herself to continue the dreams? I felt that this book was too disorganized to keep the narrative from feeling haphazard. There are moments when it feels like a breakthrough is about to happen and then it peters out. The narrator is clearly unreliable when it comes to his feelings for Annie but that makes it hard to accept his conclusions when they are made. The biggest problem is that the central idea is never fully formed and therefore the climax doesn't feel like an appropriate resolution. Willis parallels the action with author Broun's novel, but when these passages are first introduced they come out of nowhere and seem to have no correlation to the central plot. One of the elements that becomes frustrating is the slow and arduous way the narrator does his research. I wondered why he didn't just Google whether or not Robert E. Lee had daughters, and then I took a step back and realized it wasn't an option. I have never found the datedness of Willis' books to be a hindrance before, but this time it irked me.
—Samantha Glasser
I had just come from "To Say Nothing of the Dog" as was vastly dissapointed. Too many bland characters. Too many unexplained motives or actions---what was the deal with Richard? Why did he do what he did? And Annie had no life at all. Very flat. Jeff was good. He redeemed the book. Well, Traveller actually redeemed the book. I caught on to the sentiment and shed a brief tear at the end, but it could have been told much better. I think the concept would have been better portrayed in a poem. I understand though that she needed to give a lot of historical background and explain the importance of Traveller and what he eventually represented, but truthfully? By the end I didn't care at all about Annie. I felt no love there. If maybe Jeff had been married for 20 years...that would have made more sense. Annie just wasn't real.
—Amy
Having read and loved Bellwether, I was looking forward to reading more Connie Willis. I had started Doomsday Book last year, but was distracted and not able to get into it. So finding Lincoln's Dreams for $2 at my favorite used bookstore last week seemed like a good investment. The story revolves around Jeff, a historical researcher for a Civil War fiction author. Jeff meets Annie, the maybe girlfriend/patient of his former college roommate. In a couple of quick exchanges it is revealed that Annie is dreaming about events related to Robert E Lee's life during the war. Vowing to protect her, Jeff feels it is his responsibility to help her figure out her dreams and where they come from. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the dreams had more to do with Lee than Lincoln. Despite a deep admiration for Lincoln and having majored in American History, for reasons still unknown to me I have avoided the Civil War as much as possible. My knowledge of Lee, therefore, is very limited but I did like the glimpses of him that Willis gives the reader. For good or ill, he is the most defined character in the entire novel. Annie is an empty vessel without Lee's dreams. And Jeff spends all of his time worrying and trying to protect Annie. Broun doesn't start to become more than a crazy boss character until the end of the novel, which is a shame because he has potential. I guess what is most difficult about this book is that the reader, like Annie and Jeff, spends most of their time waiting for a dream. For such a short novel, not enough is happening. At the same time, Willis tries to force connections in a possible attempt to give the dreams and the characters' actions more meaning. While I liked the story about the relationship between Lee and his horse Traveller, I could have done without the contrived parallel to a certain relationship in the novel. Also, the foreshadowing and the actual text of Broun's book was heavy handed and boring. My eyes would gloss over anytime the italics to indicate excerpts from the book appeared - historical fiction apparently is not for me. I wish I could give this book two and a half stars. I very nearly liked it. The bits about historical research and how hard it is were great. Especially, when I would remember that this book was written in the late 1980s. Jeff had to go to the library to find out where Willie Lincoln was originally buried. He had to look at books! More than one book, at more than one library! I just Googled it and got a result in .23 seconds (I hadn't even finished typing).
—Sara
