Review – ‘Requiem for a dream’– Hubert Selby Jr.

For those brave enough to breach its covers, this book will take you on such a roller-coaster of thrills and suspense, and will inspire such a whirlwind of emotion that catching your breath will seem impossible. Once immersed in the book, I can guarantee that putting it down before you finish it will not be an option. No matter how much you may like to, you won’t be able to burn this book.

Selby drags the reader into the novel and leads you to trespass in the darkest and most private abysses of the characters’ minds. Their hopes, their dreams, their struggles become those of you, the reader. You are Sarah, Harry, Marion and Tyrone: feel their pain, feel their joy. Their dream is your dream, and when they spiral out of control and begin to sink towards their tragic ends, you will be left crying.

Through his unorthodox use of grammar, his total disregard of structure and his blatant use of slang, Selby is able to suck the reader in, and only spits you out at the very end. The book contains no chapters and there is no differentiation between direct and indirect speech. This may seem very confusing at first, but once past a dozen pages the reader is able to recognize the characters, as each of them has a very distinct voice. The action does not halt even for one moment and it is this quality that gives the book such a fast flow ing pace.

The whole narrative is centered on the four main characters, each of them having a fantasy of a better life and willing to give their all to make it happen. However, the means they employ to achieve their dreams only bring about their downfall.

Their stories are of addiction: Harry, Marion and Tyrone get hooked on the drugs that they are trying to push in order to get rich.; Sarah becomes dependent on the diet pills she is given to make her attractive enough to appear on television, even- though they should only have been a temporary fix.

The two quotes in the epigraph foreshadow that the search for the Dream is in vain, and Selby himself in an interview stated that he believes ‘there never will be a requiem for the Dream, simply because it will destroy us before we have the opportunity to mourn its passing.’[1]

The finale of the novel will not leave the reader fulfilled in any way, quite the opposite, in fact but the journey undertaken in the reading of the book is one that can’t ever be forgotten.

Endnotes

[1] Herbert Selby, Jr., ‘Preface’, Requiem for a Dream, (Los Angeles: Thunder Mouth Press, 1999)

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