Marianne and Mark feel as trapped in their real lives as they do in their dream lives. Rather it is a story about coping with adversity and confronting demons. Ultimately, Marianne Dreams is not a horror story for children, although it is both eerie and powerful. They will never let him out.'Īnd after that, the dream turns into a nightmare. They watch him all the time, everything he does. 'If he tried to get out of the house now, they would see. And when they argue badly one day, Marianne draws boulders around the house, outside the garden fence, and thinks to herself, They bring their bad tempers and their unhappiness with them to the house and they argue often. Marianne and Mark do not have an easy dreamscape relationship. Marianne discovers that each time she draws with the pencil during the day she and Mark are transported to the dream house at night. Mark is another of her pupils he has polio and his recovery still lies in the balance. Marianne has a tutor, Miss Chesterfield, who teaches several ill children, so that they do not fall too far behind at school. The boy's name is Mark, and he too exists both in Marianne's dream and in the real world. The house is there, the garden is there, the boy is there. In it, she finds herself inside her own picture. That night, Marianne has the most remarkable dream. She draws a house, a garden, a boy at the window. It is an ordinary looking pencil stubby, and in need of sharpening, but something about it attracts Marianne and she takes and begins to draw. Inside it, Marianne finds a pencil she cannot remember ever seeing before. Her usually sunny disposition has disappeared and in its place has come boredom, irritability, frustration and that dreadfully debilitating kind of tiredness that comes from having done absolutely nothing for days and days and days and days and endless days.Īs a last resort to amuse her depressed daughter, Marianne's mother fetches her trinket box for Marianne to sort through and play with. She is recuperating from a nasty illness and her doctor has prescribed a lengthy period of bed rest. It's a rattling good read for children in the last years of primary school, but perhaps not for the over-sensitive child.

Summary: Marianne Dreams is an eerie story of menace and threat and also a morality tale about the importance of facing one's fears.

Marianne dreams book