The past haunts the characters in The Eater of Dreams. In fifteen interconnected stories, Kat Cameron's vivid characters -- teachers, singers, writers, and misfits -- examine the inner fractures in their lives. A woman muses about her miscarried child while watching a friend's daughter play; an opera singer in Edmonton is stalked by an abusive ex-lover; a student's story of bullying reminds a woman of her own childhood traumas; a woman cuts out the heart of a faithless man; the ghost of Lafcadio Hearn haunts the bedroom of a grieving teacher in Japan. The title for the collection is taken from a Japanese folktale about the baku, a mythological creature that eats nightmares, and her tales pulsate with this energy. In the darkest moments of her characters, they find or discover the energy they need to survive, but not without breaking down the surface to see clearly who they really are. Her portraits bear witness to the longing, yearning, unspoken desire of her characters' dreams and to the uncertainty and contemplation of their lives in the flux of travel and change. The Eater of Dreams is at once contemporary but also ancient in its probing; it is a collection that blurs the borders between realism and the magic that lies outside it.
Authors
Related Organizations
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- C813/.6
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Short stories Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 9781771871860 9781771871846
- LCCN
- PR9199.4.C3455
- LCCN Item number
- E284 2019eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaBNVSL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (209 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00979739 (OCoLC)1105201346 (CaOOCEL)458485
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaBNVSL
Table of Contents
- Cover Page 1
- Title Page 4
- Copyright Page 5
- Dedication 7
- Contents 8
- Spirit Houses 10
- Whyte Noise 19
- White-Out 25
- Dancing the Requiem 39
- How You Look At Things 57
- Searching for Spock 69
- The Apostles 80
- Cutting Edge 89
- Truth or Fiction 98
- The Heart Is a Red Apple 101
- Zoonis County 105
- Variations On a Theme 114
- Homesick 121
- Fractures 132
- The Eater of Dreams 141
- 1. Gai-jin Ghost 141
- 2. Running Away 149
- 3. Tasogare 158
- 4. Baku 167
- 5. Silence 178
- 6. The Eater of Dreams 191
- 7. Reflections In Water 202
- Notes and Acknowledgments 209
