Review of Same Bed Different Dreams

 

The first line of Ed Park's fascinating book is "What is history?" which gives the reader some idea of Park's ambitions.

The book felt to me like an admixture of the nonfiction book A Kim Jong-Il Production by Paul Fischer and Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. The former is about the Korean leader's attempt to launch a North Korean film industry; the latter is a dreamy novel set in a future high-tech surveillance state. Like Park's novel, both projects were nothing if not ambitious.

There is a definitely a plot and the book is not anywhere near as complicated as  something like Finnegan's Wake or Nabokov's Ada or Ardor. Personally, I found it quite easy to read the book. However, if you are uncomfortable with ambiguity, then Same Bed Different Dreams is NOT the book for you 

One could perhaps write a review of the book just by listing some of the important people and entities contained in its pages including: 

*Ronald Reagan

*Philip Roth who is quoted as saying, "Koreans are the Jews of Asia," which he most certainly never said.

*Philip K Dick

*The Soviet downing of KAL 007 in 1983.

*The assassination of President McKinley in Buffalo in 1901 in Buffalo.

*Buffalo NY, the Buffalo Sabres and Tim Horton.

*KPG or Korean Provisional Government

*a giant technology company known by the acronym GLOAT

For a book that foregrounds the experience of dreaming I was surprised that neither Freud nor the movies of David Lynch were invoked.

I found the language at the level of the sentence to be well constructed.

If you enjoy big ambitious books and perhaps are willing to consider the occasional conspiracy along the way, then I suggest picking up Same Bed Different Dreams from your local library or bookstore.