Requiem of a dream

When I started reading this book I didn’t know what requiem meant, in fact I had never heard of the word before, I thought I would know by the end of the book but I didn’t. So I looked it up out of curiosity and here’s what it means:

A Roman Catholic mass held to offer prayers for somebody who has died

Although the main characters are not Roman Catholics (they are Jewish), and none of them actually die, the word requiem is so fitting for the book, for, as the book unfurls you realise that you’re reading about the death of three dreams. The book reveals how four people have lost their wishes, their desires and their hopes for the future, the author lays the foundations for each dream and even begins laying the bricks, that is until a huge bulldozer comes along and demolishes all in its path….

The metaphorical bulldozer in this case? Drugs.

The book is set in New York and follows four people as they get caught in a net of drug abuse, there’s Harry, his girlfriend Marion, Tyrone his best friend and his widowed mother Sara. At first Harry, Marion and Tyrone take drugs as a recreational thing, they then begin to form and shape their future plans and ambitions, in order to implement them however they need money. To make the money, they turn to drug dealing and it’s all downhill from there…

Sara on the other hand lives on her own but splits her time between her friends and her T.V. Her life is pretty routine, until one day she gets a phone call which gives her a new lease of life, she’s going to be on T.V. She then begins to prepare for the big day, including planning the perfect outfit: a red dress she wore to her sons bar mitzvah, sadly that was twenty odd years ago and her figure isn’t the same anymore. Her attempts at loosing weight are all in vain, until she sees a “doctor” who prescribes her some pills which will do the trick for her. I think Sara’s story is the most moving in the book as she seems such an unsuspecting victim of drugs, and what happens to her is awful, it makes you want to reach into the book and rant and scream at the people who did that to her . Like Mishy, my heart goes out to Sara, noone should have to go through what she did…

The book captures drug use perfectly, at first it’s a laugh, abit of fun, perhaps a medical reason. Then slowly the bit of fun becomes something you depend on to get through the day, something which you yearn and think about all the time and eventually something which governs your very existence. With each page you turn the characters fall deeper and deeper into the hellish world of drugs, the further you progress in the book the more you learn about the hideous danger of drugs.

Even though I didn’t have any intention of taking drugs before reading this book, it has put me off drugs for life, and I think it will go far in preventing drug abuse. It does take a bit of getting used to the fact that there is no speech marks used, but it gives a realistic effect I think, (when people are speaking in real life you don’t see speech marks around the words!).

I think Hubert Selby’s done a brilliant job of portraying the world of drugs and not just your stereotypical world either. Even though the book does have some disturbing scenes at the end, it’s left me intrigued by the story lines and I’d love to watch the film to see how it’s all represented on screen.