Freedom Beach
By John Kessel
1985
First Published
3.42
Average Rating
259
Number of Pages
Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews A hard-working but indecisive and only intermittently intriguing reality-puzzler that displays flaws typical of collaborative a nebulous main theme, a confusion of purposes, and a general lack of finn control. Shaun Reed wakes up one morning at Freedom Beach, an escape-proof tropical resort run by mysterious machines representing the ""dreamers""; they say Shaun is there voluntarily for a psychiatric cure but, with no recollection of his previous life, Shaun isn't convinced. During real-seeming dreams, Shaun is given back selected memories—or is fed plausible inventions; Shaun isn't sure which. Also, in a literary-games vein, he becomes a character in various dream-parodies (of Marlowe, Aristophanes, Raymond Chandler), during which he must confront the suicide of girlfriend/wife Myrna. Although Shaun has never written anything, he calls himself a writer; Freedom Beachers are forbidden to write—but Myrna leaves him a poem as a sort of suicide note. Eventually, Shaun escapes from Freedom Beach back to the reality of 1986—where, suddenly, the ubiquitous ""dreamers"" (in the utopian sense) are in control of the world, apparently doing good deeds. Shaun remains unpersuaded, though the dreamers tell him he can change things if he doesn't like them; and finally he starts to write. The main problem is just what all this adds up to, or indeed whether it adds up at all. So, what with the vague psychologizing (self-help, 1980's style) and the parable-like feel (unconvincing utopian leanings), the upshot is a tangled but lightweight and fugitive drama.
Avg Rating
3.42
Number of Ratings
43
5 STARS
19%
4 STARS
26%
3 STARS
40%
2 STARS
12%
1 STARS
5%
goodreads
Author
John Kessel
Author · 14 books
John (Joseph Vincent) Kessel co-directs the creative writing program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. A winner of the Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and Tiptree Awards, his books include Good News From Outer Space, Corrupting Dr. Nice, The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories. His story collection Meeting in Infinity was a New York Times Notable Book. Most recently, with James Patrick Kelly he has edited the anthologies Feeling Very Strange, Rewired, The Secret History of Science Fiction and Kafkaesque. Born in Buffalo, NY, Kessel has a PhD in American Literature, has been an NEA Fellow, and for twenty years has been one of the organizers of the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop.
