Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams (Myths)

I find Alexander McCall Smith's stories about Africa and her people to be fascinating. I wondered what his story-telling gift would make of the Celtic god of dreams. The structure surprised me, as the stories moved back and forth between the mythical God and the role of dreams in real life. On occasion, the connections between the stories were wrought with almost sublime irony and meaning. My favorite story in the book is I Dream of You which connects past and present, myth and reality in a most enjoyable way and describes the role that dream therapy can play in helping us.

The sentences in the book often sparkle with wit and wisdom that will leave you thinking about their wider meaning, rather merely wanting to continue reading the story: "They shouted to one another, words of encouragement, words of dismay at missed chances, urging others to run faster, to outwit the other group." That sentence has more imagination, meat, and insight in it than many novels that I read.

I found that the book was overly tied to the myth of Angus, the god. Mr. McCall Smith is much better with writing about people than writing about gods. With a shift in emphasis toward the current world, this would have been an outstanding, five-star book. As it is, the "current world" sections are terrific.

A Good Read (6/6 people found this helpful)

This is one of the Canongate Myth Series in which well known authors are invited to tackle and rewrite their favourite mythological story. It's a great premise and so far has yielded some very interesting work. Here, the prolific author Alexander McCall Smith, perhaps best known for his Mma Ramotswe detective novels, retells the celtic myth of Dream Angus, a kind of proto BFG figure! I enjoyed this book, but felt that at times it was a little fragmented. It is set as a series of interlinked short stories, ricocheting back and forth between telling the story of the creation and life of Dream Angus, and stories set in modern Scotland which take on themes and meaning from their entwining with both the story of Dream Angus and his mythological purpose. Some of the stories are quite brutal, others tender and lyrical, all well written, but it is sometimes hard to see where the myth fits in. Nevertheless, an interesting attempt, and one which works at many, if not all levels.

"There is always an Angus within us - Angus the dreamer." (8/8 people found this helpful)

DREAM ANGUS is part of the Canongate series, in which popular writers take a myth and re-tell it in their owm personal way. Although I have not read any other books by McCall Smith, or any of the other Canongate books, I was quite pleasantly surprised by DREAM ANGUS.

Angus comes from myths of Ireland and Scotland. As McCall Smith so eloquently explains in the introduction to his small novel, "Angus puts us in touch with our dreams - those entities which Auden described so beautifully in his Freud poem as the creatures of the night that are waiting for us, that need our recognition." But Angus is also the God of love, youth and beauty. Because of this, any who see him are likely to lose their heart to him.
McCall Smith decides to place Angus within contemporary Scotland. The book is made up of interconnecting stories of people that, in some way, all need to be closer to their dreams. At times, the figure of Angus may seem slightly elusive in certain stories, but ultimately they all have a common thread - that of life being the pursuit of dreams.
Personally, I enjoyed the final chapter, "I dream of you", the most. Here McCall Smith begins with Angus, the God of love who has women throwing themselves at him and yet he is not able to find one woman who he would want to settle down with. Until he himself begins to dream of a beautiful woman - her beauty is so that he is unable to eat, he only thinks of finding her. Later on in the chapter, we learn of a young woman who discovers her husband has had an affair. After leaving him, she begins to put her life back together by seeing a therpaist who encourages her to examine her dreams.

As a short, quiet read, this book serves quite well. Although there were moments of pure delight, it did not manage to enthrall me as I had hoped it would. Dreams are such mysterious things; in a sense they can be the closest thing to magic we shall encounter within our lives, and I hoped this would have been reflected within the writing. Although the final chapter was filled with magic for me, it was too little too late.
For another small novel about following your dreams, I would recommend Paulo Coelho's THE ALCHEMIST.

Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams (Myths)

Alexander McCall Smith

Reader Reviews:

Spans Myth and Reality from Yesterday to Today (2/2 people found this helpful)

A Good Read (6/6 people found this helpful)

"There is always an Angus within us - Angus the dreamer." (8/8 people found this helpful)

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