Book Review #24 - The Good Dream

So, I went and saw the movie Looper this weekend.  I don't watch many movies and even fewer R rated movies but it was the kind of weekend where I really, really wanted to have movie theater popcorn and diet-coke and so I looked at Rotten Tomatoes website and it was either the 12% stinky trash Taken 2 or the 95% good looking tomato Looper.  Looper sounded like an interesting premise - mobs murdering their hits by sending them 30 years in the past through time travel - and somebody from the Tony Kornheiser show recommended it, securing Jay's vote, so we went hoping the R rated parts weren't going to be too awful.

Turns out, they were.  I hated all of the blood and guts. And the drugs. And the promiscuity (This wasn't The King's Speech kind of R-rating).  Gross.  And although the story WAS interesting, it wasn't nearly worthy of its 95% ripe and red tomatoes..  The time-traveling moral of the story is if you can personally change the future for the better, you should do it.  I'm not sure it's the cloud parting, angel singing epiphany the movie critics seem to think it is but I think that's where the good ratings are coming from.

Then, two days ago, I pick up The Good Dream and read about a single thirty year-old woman named Ivorie, in a small Tennessee farming community who causes a stir in her sleepy town when she rescues and cares for an abused 8 year-old boy and changes his future. I thought, "This is Looper without the mob and strip clubs and drugs!"  It's a PG, 1950s, small-town non-time-traveling Looper!

Ivorie's brother, Henry, says this to his wife in reference to his sister, "It doesn't matter what sort of hate that boy's daddy was eaten up with.  All that was broken the moment Sarah (he is the only person that calls her Sarah.  Her name is Sarah Ivorie) went up in those hills with God Almighty filling her chest and she brought him down out of there....Love's in that boy's bloodline now.  For a thousand generations....Not bad for a day's work."

He even goes on to say that he's not chasing rainbows and knows about the rough rows to hoe up ahead.  Some readers take issue with the boy not being more emotionally damaged than the author portrays him to be in this story.  I don't know.  I'm not an expert.  I certainly image anyone who is subjected to the kind of physical, emotional and sexual abuse this boy is described as enduring would face many life challenges in his future but I don't think the book ties a bow around these two characters and declares them finished.  I think the author is saying in a more-palatable-to-me-than-Looper-way, "Do the right thing."  Even when it's hard.  Especially when it's hard.   Recommended!