It was good, really interesting, but just not as good as I had hoped. It didn't sweep me away into another world like I had hoped it would. It did however make me very interested in some of the stories and writers referenced throughout, that the story is based on. ** Possible Spoilers? **Got a tad confusing towards the end, what with characters having multiple personalities I knew something was "not right" but still a bit challenging to comprehend what exactly was going on. I feel like there was a gap in the story, that the author sums up as a complex hallucination, but that's not good enough for me. I want more explanation about what was actually happening during that hallucination. It like he took the easy the way, as if he were to use "and then he woke up. The end." "The Rules of Dreaming" which I won from a Goodreads Giveaway is a tantalizing murder mystery that revolves around the death of an opera singer, Maria Morgan, the mother of twin schizophrenic patients at the Palmer Institute a prestigious psychiatric hospital outside New York. Suffering from the trauma of the alleged suicide the twins reamin after seven years, heavily sedated ; the one lost in a world of silence, the other uttering mad gibberish.In this novel Bruce Hartman blends a murder coverup, an operatic score, and madness which not only impacts the patients but the staff at the Institute. He weaves a story so intense and at times so complicated that the reader is challenged to pay close attention to details because the insanity can seem like reality. As the plot thickens and the mystery of Maria's death begins to unravel leaving those trying to solve it in a wake of sinister repercussions, Bruce Hartman's characters seem to evolve, the strength of their personalities growing stronger as they confront each other and the sinister evil underlining the mystery. Ned Hoffman a newly graduated psychiatrist finds the isolated life of the Institute lonely. As he tries to bring the twins back to a kind of normalcy, Hunter's madness threatens to expose his secret desires that come alive in his fantasies and nightmares.Nicole, a 26 year old graduate student recovering from a breakdown and struggling to regain her life befriends the twins and becomes involuntarily sucked into the mystery that surrounds their psychosis. When Hunter Morgan, the mad twin who speaks through multiple personalities begins fiendishly playing a Shumann piece without any training on the piano the threads of his psychosis begin to unravel and clues to his mother's murder are exposed. Into this insanely riveting plot add the sleuthing ability of Dubin,a self-proclaimed blackmailer, a guilt-ridden father, a distraught and unloved second wife, two competitive brothers, and two mad women-one an innocent virgin, the other a nymphomaniac. With each twist and turn of the story, each new murder, betrayal and illicit affair the timbre of the mystery and madness grows until the facts seem blurred in unreality. Only at the end does it all make sense and this novel becomes a remarkable, complicated work worth reading.
What do You think about The Rules Of Dreaming (2013)?
This was an odd but not unsatisfying book to read. Different than anything I had read in awhile.
—buuks
it reminded me of shutter island but not executed half as well
—cathy
