Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis
212 pages
Published 1987
Read from October 10 to October 11
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
A beautifully structured tale, rich with symmetry and surprising parallels. Willis' gentle prose supports a story that feels timeless, at least in a genre-specific sense: it could fit into almost any SF movement of the past fifty years, from the New Wave's artsy and meticulously structured ruminations on psychic influences and fate to the understated melancholy of ghost-story fantasy from the last decade. Alas, the central characters develop no life of their own. The narrator remains an Everyman, while Annie, seemingly dreaming the dreams of Robert E. Lee, is little more than a cipher, closed-lipped on any details of her own backstory. The lack of character leaves Lincoln's Dreams a technical and memorable achievement but, in my opinion, bloodless and insufficiently moving.
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