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DREAMS OF DROWNING
Patricia Averbach
Bedazzled Ink Publishing
February 6th, 2024
311 Pages
Goodreads | Amazon
As someone who was born and raised in Toronto (and still currently living here) I loved reading a book that takes place here. It was such a joy to read about places I’ve visited often and street names I recognized. A couple of the younger men in the book went to Malvern Collegiate and I lived across the road from the school as a kid (Swanwick Ave.). There is talk of the Greek singer, Nana Mouskouri who I am also familiar with as my grade five French teacher loved her music and would play her French albums to the class often. Reading this book was like a walk down memory lane for me. I have shopped at Loblaws and eaten at Fran’s, this book is like a love letter to Toronto and I adored that.
I really adored the character of Jacob. I felt a kind of kinship with him as he has eyesight issues and I am deaf. When he describes feeling embarrassed by mistakes he makes because of his sight I felt that because I am often mistaken for rude or stupid because I can’t or don’t hear someone. I liked Patricia Averbach’s sense of humour while telling this story. I laughed while reading the part where Amy claims that the fascists of Greece in the 60s couldn’t happen in the USA because coups belong to small, struggling countries – not if Trump has his way, he’s going to be a dictator on day one and is currently under indictment for plotting a coup and trying to overturn the election on January 6, 2021.
Where I had a problem with this story was with the Greek history and politics overwhelming it. I have never been a history fan, not even my own Country’s history so all these facts and dates bored me to tears. It’s unfortunate that the real story, described in the blurb wasn’t front and center and didn’t really even get touched on until the midway mark. So, I am of two minds about the book. It is well-researched and well-written but I was expecting a fantasy/magical realism and it was so minute that the story felt more like a textbook on the history of Greece and the political climate at the time (1973). This is simply a wrong-reader situation.
Thank you to author Patricia Averbach and Bedazzled Ink Publishing for the Advance Readers Copy.
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