It should first and fairly noted that I don’t ordinarily read these types of books. By “types of books” I mean ones involving the supernatural. And lawyers. I hate courtroom drama books.

At any rate, this inital apprehension led me to be a little wary about Kate Hunter’s The Dream Sequence. In the novella, an unnamed woman wakes up to realize that she has lost her memory. She can recognize every day objects, and she can speak, but objects hold no attachment to her. Panicked, she meets a man who tells her to visit an urban witch doctor. The man tells her that he can help her, but she has to visit him quickly, or else she will die.

It goes without saying that this book is amazingly abstract. Not a lot of action takes place here; the action mostly takes place in the narrator’s dreams and walking to and from the witch doctor’s office. The rest of the time is spent in the woman’s head as she tries to sort out what is happening for her.

As frustrating as that can be for readers like me who enjoy realistic fiction, at the same time, Hunter works extraordinarily well within abstract restraints. Since the protagonist doesn’t know who she once was, neither does the reader. Besides, nature vs. nuture aside, without a memory of experiences and emotions, how can a person have a personality? Given how horrifying her situation must be, Hunter pushes that anxiety by writing in a severely loose writing style. Sentences are formed by a series of short phrases with scant punctuation that ramble from one nervous idea to the next. Highly effective. The narrator’s dreams act in the same way. The narrator has very powerful dreams, some of which are terrifying, involving seeing people she should know but can’t recognize, including herself, and so the images in her dream pounce from one to the next. On top of that, Hunter gives her protagonist some pretty interesting revelations about what her loss of memory means, such as attempting to regain your memory is much like living your life in reverse. In additon, not having your memory can give you a clean slate; if you can’t remember having done anything to anyone, have those things actually happened?

While these abstractions are handled extremely well, my major problem comes in that there is hardly anything grounded in reality, which again, could just be my preferences. The things that are realistic aren’t given any kind of in-depth description. We don’t know anything about the protagonist after the point where she realizes that she has lost her memory. Personally, I would have liked to know more about the protagonist’s waking life aside from her short walks to and from the witch doctor’s office. For example, the novella includes tons of discussion that people have been placing curses on each other, but we don’t know anything about the curses or by what means the curses are being placed. While the narrator may not know, the witch doctor certainly does. In addition, I wanted to see the woman interact with her surroundings and try to forge a relationship with the present. One point in the novella mentions her growing hungry because while she knows what is in her refridgerator, she doesn’t know what she likes and what she doesn’t. It may have been interesting to see her testing foods. Or to see what she thinks of the clothes in her closet. Or to know what she thinks of the people she meets other than whether she can trust them. At the same time, with a person as preoccupied as the narrator, it’s not surprising that she’s not taking the time out to describe her surroundings. In addition, a person’s memory isn’t tangible either, and that’s the focus of the novella. For me, however, I just think more of a balance would have been interesting.

Aside from that, I think Hunter has a lot of potential. I’d be interested in seeing what else this author has to offer.

Buy The Dream Sequence and check out other books at the Impetus Press site.