Basil's Dream

By Christine Hale

Book Overview

A novel of soul-searing love, lies and betrayals, and struggles of conscience. Lucy Langston's marriage is failing when her husband Darrell is suddenly offered a new job as CFO for an American... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1604890231
• ISBN13: 9781604890235
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Livingston Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.5" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Danger in Paradise

I spent my honeymoon in Bermuda and was fascinated by Hale's portrayal of "the other island," the behind-closed-doors, shadowed-alleyways, all-is-not-what-it-seems setting that a casual tourist never experiences. From the novel's opening, the island is as much a character as the complex individuals populating this richly nuanced story of racial inequity, political machinations, and forbidden love. From embattled MP Marcus Passjohn and his troubled son Zef to reluctant American expat Lucy Langston, with whom Marcus conducts a perilous affair, the novel's cast unmasks the sunny island as seething with discontent. The story weaves one dangerous liaison into another until the contents of a secret notebook sets the intricate tapestry ablaze like a gasoline-drenched Guy Fawkes bonfire. The reader feels deeply for Marcus and Lucy, who offer each other the only possible comfort as their sons' after-dark activities cause the death of an island icon and the government and Lucy's marriage crumble around them.

An Unforgettable Journey

Basil's Dream is a beautifully written, thought-provoking, thrilling novel. Hale takes us on a journey through Lucy Langston's troubled marriage, her failing relationship with her son, an illicit affair, and political unrest in Bermuda. In Basil's Dream, love, passion, intrigue, and hope are seamlessly woven into a story that I couldn't stop reading and did not want to end.

Vivid, complex, and a great story

I thoroughly enjoyed Basil's Dream. It's literary fiction, social commentary, love story, and political thriller. This novel reminds me of Russell Banks' Continental Drift and Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. It's a good story that's hard to put down, and a morally and politically complex story that's hard to forget. Hale courageously imagines disparate points of view, from the leader of the opposition party who was once black Bermudians' hope for change to the unhappy teen-aged son of a white American couple, bullied in school and unmoored in a new country. The characters are vivid, complex, alive. Weeks after reading this book, I can still see and hear the characters. I still imagine the landscape of Bermuda. I still recoil from the fires, figurative and literal, that burn through the pages.

A memorable journey

Basil's Dream is a stunning novel. Readers will be quickly drawn to the character of Lucy Langston, a woman trying to hold together her troubled marriage and to be a good mother to her teenage son, even as her husband's business firm relocates their white, American family from Connecticut to Bermuda. In Bermuda, Lucy's story becomes truly gripping as her life begins to parallel the life of Marcus Passjohn, the black leader of the Opposition political party who wants to heal his troubled island nation, at the same time that he tries to repair his own relationship with his troubled teenage son. The love story that develops is nearly epic in its scope, as it takes two struggling families into the complex terrain of racial and political struggle in a country that is trying to define its modern identity against a British colonial past.

Complex, passionate dream

I expected fine, sensitive writing and found it, but there is much more: tension that made me invest deeply in the outcome of every chapter, complex characters who were impossible to dismiss with a tidy lable, a luscious sense of place and time. I read this novel while traveling and I found I was recalling it as vividly as my real experience. What a joy to find a novel as difficult and rewarding as real life.