Same Bed Different Dreams

Ed Park spins historical fact into brilliant literary fiction with Same Bed Different Dreams. His gripping prose and flair for unconventional storytelling makes even the most opaque sections completely engrossing. This book will coast onto yearly Best-of lists (including my own) and it should be in contention for major literary awards. I was simply blown away.

It's a mesmerizing fever dream of a novel, with an expansive story that contracts on a whim. It's sprawling, yet intimate. The subtle interconnections between its nested layers are a joy to puzzle out and it begs to be re-read. Starting over with more enlightened eyes (and maybe a character web to track the broad cast of players and their connections) would certainly yield a different, yet still satisfying, experience.

While it's difficult to describe the book in terms of plot, if you're an enjoyer of secret societies, doomsday cults, alternate histories, coded messages, spies, double agents, artificial intelligence, and the history of Korea – give this book a go. If you bristle at the thought of an unconventional narrative structure without much hand-holding, perhaps skip it. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it was certainly mine.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf and follow @specshelf on Twitter.

It seems such a minor detail, but I wasn't enjoying this read until I started over with the understanding that the historical events and people in the Dream portion of the book are all real. And the opening refrain of the book begins to make sense. After all, what is history? Turns out it's a collection of unlikely coincidences, vastly connected events, tiny moments that ripple and collide, a three-way standoff, a memory of rain, a cure for insomnia.

Korean history is easily reduced to Japanese occupation and the Korean War until its soft-power explosion that offered the world k-pop, k-dramas and k-beauty — but it's obviously much more than that and Park explores its wild nooks and crannies, giving us the cut finger club, assassinations, and oblique poetry written in architectural magazines. From Jack London dismissing Koreans as “the perfect type of inefficiency - of utter worthlessness” to Ian Fleming's Goldfinger claiming Koreans “are the cruelest, most ruthless people in the world” it hasn't been easy changing the minds of the Western world.

And the 3 sections of the book begin to converge as you read. Elements echo across stories and tiny connections are made while characters evolve and mutate before our eyes. It rewards close attention even as it plays with expectation and indulges in a bit of fun. From the 1999 Stanley Cup final between the Buffalo Sabres and Dallas Stars to Friday the 13th and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il. It's all connected and it's a blast to read.