In this slim book, a mere 200 pages, we have a dystopian future, a sentient intelligence, a half-fox spirit whose lifespan is reborn as a human over and over again, and the goings-on of a Daoist convent in the 7th to 11th centuries CE. Lydia Kwa’s A Dream Wants Waking is not short on plot threads. The action jumps from character to character, and timeline to timeline, whipping us through a fantastical story about love, death, and chosen bonds.
In Luoyang 2219 CE, Yinhue, a half-fox, half-human spirit is living with her father in this life, Stanley. She’s haunted by memories of Ling, a platonic soulmate from her life as Qilan, a Daoist nun in the 7th century, during the Tang Dynasty. She had returned to Ling as Ling lay dying, in order to guide Ling’s soul – built something happened, and she lost Ling. Stanley loves Yinhue, though he’s plagued by the memories of his ex-wife Phoebe, who abandoned them because she couldn’t stand Phoebe. There’s also Gui, a demon set on retrieving what they believe to be lost property. And there’s also Wen, a scientist working at the lab that houses No. 1, A.I. which lives inside a giant brain, and reaches out to Wen to explain their recent erratic behaviour.
Interspersed with the stories from the 23rd century are the flashes back to Tang China, where Ling lives out her life, and others begin to enter Yinhue’s story, explaining her presence in both eras. Kwa also offers glimpses of earlier events of the 23rd century to shed light on the actions being taken in 2219 and the environment in which they take place.
The pacing of the novel was dizzying, while being at odds with the calm tone in which it was told from both 2219 CE and the Tang China era, was also challenging to follow. The story jumped between timelines so often and so quickly – most sections being fairly short. The lack of transition felt abrupt through most of the novel and kept me at a distance from the story. That said, what Kwa is doing here is one of the more unique stories I’ve read this year. Blending traditional Chinese myths, dystopian fiction focused on an environmental disaster, and an artificial intelligence-like being in No.1, Kwa hits a lot in a short novel and makes them make sense together. I think A Dream Wants Waking would have been more impressive with more room in the story, but Kwa’s style and sense of fresh spins on recognizable plotlines cannot be denied.
A Dream Wants Waking is a strange novel, a hectic novel, but also a thoughtful and fascinating novel. Kwa offers observations on the things preoccupying us considerably these days (A.I., climate change), but offers us hope for how we can change the world, connect with our pasts, and perhaps set things right.
Lydia Kwa was born in Singapore but moved to Toronto to begin studies in Psychology at the University of Toronto in 1980. After finishing her graduate studies in Clinical Psychology at Queen’s University in Kingston, she moved to Calgary, Alberta; then to Vancouver, BC, and has lived and worked here on the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples since 1992.
- Publisher : Buckrider Books (Wolsak & Wynn, Oct. 17 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 200 pages
- ISBN-10 : 198949675X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1989496756
