The Dream Mistress

de Jenny Diski

A sensual novel about companionship, heartache, and alienation. Mimi has the greatest difficulty staying awake; she nods off at the movies, during conversations with Jack, in the middle of a dinner party. She sleeps, apparently dream-free, partly escaping the demands of waking consciousness, partly submitting to the irresistible pull of "a veil of water-sodden grey mist." One cold winter night, Mimi discovers an unconscious bag lady huddled behind a London cinema. A sense of duty and curiosity prompts her to call an ambulance. Later that evening, after Jack walks out on her, Mimi withdraws to bed, wondering if the vagrant could have been someone she once knew. Could the old woman layered in filthy rags have been Leah, Mimi's abandoned and abandoning mother, in a former existence? Or perhaps it was Bella, a bomb-blast victim with a disfigured face, silenced and surgically reconstructed, but strangely and passionately loved by married Casanova. Then again, she might have been a nun, perverse and reclusive, and gifted with miraculous powers. Sensual and absorbing, "The Dream Mistress" is an intelligent novel about skepticism, love, and faith.