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Title: Dreamers of the Day
Author: Mary Doria Russell
Narrator: Ann Marie Lee
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
Language: English
Release date: 08-28-08
Publisher: Books on Tape
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 121 votes
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
So begins the account of Agnes Shanklin, the charmingly diffident narrator of Mary Doria Russell's compelling new novel 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 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - 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.
Neither a pawn nor a participant at the conference, Agnes is ostensibly insignificant, and that makes her a welcome sounding board for Churchill, Lawrence, and Bell. It also makes her unexpectedly attractive to the charismatic German spy Karl Weilbacher. 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 prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the Nile, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East with a story that brilliantly elucidates today's headlines. As enlightening as it is entertaining, Dreamers of the Day is a memorable, passionate, gorgeously written novel.
Critic Reviews:
"An instantly likable heroine whose unlikely adventures will keep readers hooked to the end." (Publishers Weekly)
Members Reviews:
good historical novel
The author writes very well, and the narrartor Ann Marie Lee is one of my favorites. I learned a lot about World War I, primarily its aftermath and the Europeans dividing up the defeated Ottoman Empire, creating new countries, like Iraq, not knowing or caring enough about the people to do a decent job.
Little Big Woman
Meeting and interacting with world famous people worked very well until the end when in my view,it became contrived and spoiled what was a very good story.
Flaccid preachy writing
While it was a fun idea to set a novel in the Middle East with the real shapers of the political borders post WWI, I found this to be a very dull read. The narrator, both the reader and the first person storyteller, were wimpy, helpless women. I think the reader made this aspect worse. The author chose a few social characteristics of the historical characters to emphasize--they were not fleshed out like real people. The historical issues of the day were mostly set out like a lecture in a classroom, not well integrated into conversations. The history was interesting, but there are better books out there: try Desert Queen instead, about Gertrude Bell who was a fascinating woman.
A Bold Book by a Daring Author
This is my fourth book by Mary Doris Russell. I am in awe of this writer.
