The Dream Room

By Marcel Möring

‘Into its 120 pages, Möring folds a war memoir, a family psychodrama and a meditation on time and memory. It is a miracle of compression: everything is significant…one races through it, eager to discover the heart of the mystery.’ Guardian

The story of a family – mother, father (ex-World War II pilot), twelve-year-old son David – who live above a toy shop in a small town on the windswept Dutch coast.

On the same day that David finds himself listening to the toy shop owner complaining that he can’t sell model aeroplane kits any more because kids nowadays are too lazy to glue all the pieces together, David’s father quits his job in a fit of pique and pride. A few hours later, his mother comes home, having left her job too.

So, David devises a plan – and before the day is over the whole family is at home, putting model aeroplanes together. A wonderful, perfect summer ensues, suddenly interrupted by the arrival of an unexpected visitor, his father’s old friend from the war. His arrival revives old feelings of loyalty, love and hatred – and ensures that nothing will ever return to a perfect state again.

Accessible, warm, funny and wise, this novel was a massive bestseller in Möring’s native Holland. A gem of a story, it has the fable-like appeal of a “Miss Garnet’s Angel” (but without the middle-Englandness) or of Bernard Schlink’s “The Reader” (but without the heavy moral overtone).The book is most reminiscent of J.L. Carr’s “A Month in the Country”, the Booker Prize-winning English novel set just after World War I, heavy with nostalgia, evocative, melancholy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jun 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9780007480975

Marcel Möring

Holland’s most famous author, Marcel Möring, was born in 1957 in Enschede, and he now lives in Rotterdam. He decided to become a writer at the age of thirteen. After studying Dutch literature for two years and writing and directing plays, Möring published his aclaimed first novel, ‘Mendels Erfenis’ in 1990. His second, ‘Het Grote Verlangen’ (‘The Great Longing’) won the AKO Prize, the Dutch equivalent of the Booker Prize, and sold over 100,000 copies in the Netherlands alone.

Reviews for The Dream Room

[othemts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This short novel is part coming-of-age story, part family history, and part exploration of how we tell stories. The basic is gist of the story is about a 12-year-old boy whose father is a former aviator whose life is directionless since an airplane crash and his mother is a nurse who loses her job. David decides to "save" his family by having them all build model airplanes for sale in the toy shop below their home. David also has a passion for cooking that is encouraged by a friend of the family. I feel like I missed something towards the end of the book as there is a "big event" but I can't figure out what happened. I'm not alone as other reviews mention this as well. Nevertheless this is a well-written philosophical and dreamy book.