The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan

Ostensibly, The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan is a book for children. It’s not really a novel, because the author himself conceived these pieces as separate stories to be told to his own children. Assembled in this way, however, in form they resemble many contemporary writers’ novels that portray apparently disparate and unrelated scenes featuring a main character who acts as a thread. It’s not a linear plot that is desired, but recognition that the character responds and develops as a result of what life presents and is changed by that experience. 

In his introduction to these “Peter stories”, Ian McEwan describes how he tried to forget about “our mighty tradition of children’s literature and to write a book for adults about a child in the language of the children could understand”. In so doing, and very succinctly, the author has achieved his aim and has thus created a world which is multi-layered in that there are events themselves and then there are the emotional worlds related to them.

Peter Fortune is eleven or thereabouts. Precision doesn’t matter. He has a younger sister called Kate who always seems to be able to get her own way, either by guile or by politics. Parents Thomas and Viola both work, it seems, but we never get to know them. From Peter`s point of view it is as parents that they exist and thus all possible questions about them are both answered and irrelevant.

What Peter experiences via imagination is at the core of this work, as so the review will not reveal any detail. Suffice it to say there is a cat, some toys, a burglar, a bully and even an adult in the mix. Peter address is these objects of interest directly and without analysis. He is rarely in control of his thoughts and regularly surprises himself. He addresses no great questions directly, but raises many for his co-travellers.