Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

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Memory and Dream: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Dreams have magic in them. A few of us have the power to make that magic real. A masterwork by one of fantasy’s most gifted storytellers: a magnificent tale of love, courage, and the power of imagination to transform our lives.
This is the novel Charles de Lint’s many devoted readers have been waiting for, the compelling odyssey of a young woman whose visionary art frees ancient spirits into the modern world.
Isabelle Copley’s visionary art frees ancient spirits. As the young student of the cruel, brilliant artist Vincent Rushkin, she discovered she could paint images so vividly real they brought her wildest fantasies to life. But when the forces she unleashed brought tragedy to those she loved, she turned her back on her talent—and on her dreams.
Now, twenty years later, Isabelle must come to terms with the shattering memories she has long denied, and unlock the slumbering power of her brush. And, in a dark reckoning with her old master, she must find the courage to live out her dreams and bring the magic back to life.
Charles de Lint’s skillful blending of contemporary urban characters and settings with traditional folk magic has made him one of the most popular fantasy authors of his generation.
Memory and Dream is the most ambitious work of de Lint’s extraordinary career, an exciting tale of epic scope that explores the power our dreams have to transform the world-or make it a waking nightmare.
It is the story of Isabelle Copley, a young artist who once lived in the bohemian quarter of the northern city of Newford. As a student of Vincent Rushkin, a cruel but gifted painter, she discovered an awesome power—to craft images so real that they came to life. With her paintbrush she called into being the wild spirits of the wood, made her dreams come true with canvas and paint. But when the forces she unleashed brought unexpected tragedy to those she loved, she ran away from Newford, turning her back on her talent-and on her dreams.
Now, twenty years later, the power of Newford has reached out to draw her back. To fulfill a promise to a long-dead friend, Isabelle must come to terms with the shattering memories she has long denied, and unlock the slumbering power of her brush. She must accept her true feelings for her newfound lover John Sweetgrass, a handsome young Native American who is the image of her most intense imaginings. And, in a dark reckoning with her old master, she must find the courage to live out her dreams, and bring the magic back to life.
Charles de Lint - Novelist, poet, artist, and musician, Charles de Lint is one of the most influential fantasy writers of his generation. With such warmly received works as Spiritwalk, Moonheart, Into the Green, and Dreams Underfoot(also set in the town of Newford), he has earned high praise from readers and critics alike, Booklist has called him “one of the most original fantasy writers currently working.” And The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction writes: “De Lint shows us that, far from being escapism, contemporary fantasy can be the deep, mythic literature of our time.” De Lint and his wife MaryAnn Harris, an artist, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, where they are both Celtic musicians in the band Jump At the Sun. “For more than a decade, Charles de Lint has enjoyed a reputation as one of the world’s leading fantasists.”— “A superb storyteller. De Lint has a flair for tales that blur the lines between the mundane world and magical reality, and nowhere is this more evident than in his fictional city of Newford.”— “De Lint can feel the beauty of the ancient lore he is evoking. He can well imagine what it would be like to conjure the Other World among ancient standing stones. His characters have a certain fallibility that makes them multidimensional and human, and his settings are gritty. This is no Disneylike Never-Never Land. Life and death in de Lint’s world are more than a matter of a few words or a magic crystal.” – “There is no better writer now than Charles de Lint at bringing out the magic in contemporary life ... The best of the post-Stephen King contemporary fantasists, the one with the clearest vision of the possibilities of magic in a modern setting.” — “In the fictional city of Newford, replete with the brutal realities of modern urban life, de Lint’s characters encounter magic in strange and unexpected places ... In de Lint’s capable hands, modern fantasy becomes something other than escapism. It becomes folk song, the stuff of urban myth.” —

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“Screw you,” Jilly told him, smiling sweetly. “Come back when you’ve learned some manners. Or better yet, don’t come back at all.”

Then she slammed the door in his face and engaged its two deadbolts. He knocked again, but this time she ignored it. The nerve of him. Who did he think he was to stand there and pretend he didn’t know her, not to mention treat her like she was something that had gotten stuck to the bottom of his shoe?

When he continued to bang on the door, she called out, “If you’re still here by the time I count to three I’m dialing nine-one-one. I’ve got the phone in my hand. One. Two ...”

The banging stopped.

“Three,” Jilly finished softly.

She waited a little longer, then went over to the window by the fire escape. Shooing Rubens away, she heaved the window up and stepped out onto the metal landing. Rubens immediately jumped back up onto the sill, but she closed the window before he could get out. At the bottom of the fire escape, she turned down the alley that led onto Yoors Street, hugging the brick wall as she went. Before she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she peeked around the corner. She was just in time to see the man who said he wasn’t John heading off in the other direction. He moved with a stiff angry stride that had none of the loose ambling gait that she always associated with the John Sweetgrass she knew.

This was so weird, she thought. She’d seen him just a few days ago and while it wasn’t as though they’d ever been great buddies or anything, he’d never been flat-out rude to her before. And it wasn’t just the rudeness. There’d been a meanness in his eyes that was out of keeping with the John Sweetgrass she remembered.

She waited until he turned the far corner before going back up to her studio. She’d better warn Isabelle, she thought, while running through a second act of

“Cat Trying to Escape Through Window” with Rubens when she climbed back into the studio from the fire escape. She had her hand on the phone and was already dialing the number at Wren Island when she realized what she was doing.

“Shit.”

Isabelle was in town now—probably organizing her studio at Joli Coeur. Where she didn’t even have a phone yet.

Sighing, Jilly realized that she’d have to walk over to talk to Isabelle. But maybe it wouldn’t be a complete loss, she thought as she left her studio by the more conventional method of the front door.

She’d at least be able to get her stuff back from Isabelle. She didn’t really care about any of it except for the brush. She really loved that brush.

XIII

By the time Isabelle reached her new studio in Joli Coeur, she felt as though the day had taken on a kind of surreal air. She laid the plastic bag she’d gotten from the security guard down on the windowsill and looked out on her view of the river.

She still couldn’t get over how things had worked out for her at the bus terminal. It was what usually happened to Kathy, not her. But then maybe part of Kathy’s legacy had been the kind fate that had allowed the letter to finally arrive in her mailbox yesterday, and for these packages to still be waiting for her after so many years when, by all rights, they should have been lost to her forever.

Or maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe it was like the security guard had said: the two of them had gotten caught up in one of Kathy’s stories and his keeping these parcels for her was just a part of the story that had been hidden until now—the way the winter hid the ongoing story of the fields and woods under a blanket of snow.

How long would it take for the whole story to be laid out for her? she wondered. But then she thought of Rushkin, and of Jilly having seen John Sweetgrass downstairs from where she was standing at this very minute, and she wasn’t so sure she wanted to know the whole story. Not all ofKathy’s stories had ended with their protagonists happy, or even surviving.

Isabelle wasn’t even sure she believed in fate. Coincidence, surely. Perhaps even synchronicity. She liked to think there was such a thing as free will and choice, but there were times when events seemed to be the work of fate, and only fate: that Kathy should be her roommate at Butler U. Her first meeting with Rushkin. The arrival of yesterday’s letter and the claiming of today’s parcels.

Her gaze dropped down to the bag on the windowsill. What did fate have waiting for her in here?

She had lived this long, not having what was in this bag. There was nothing to make her open the packages. No one knew she had them, except for those two security guards and she wasn’t likely to run into them again.

There was no one to whom she would have to answer if she simply put the bag in the back of a closet and carried on with her life.

No one, except herself.

She sighed then and tried to shed her fear. For it was fear, plain and simple, that made her want to hide Kathy’s legacy and pretend it had never been delivered into her hands. It was still not too late, she thought, to escape the demands of the story to which the security guard had alluded, the story into which she could feel herself stepping. It waited like massed clouds on a far horizon, dark and swollen with events over which she would have no control, a storm that might easily sweep away all she held dear.

But she could do this much, she thought. If the story was there waiting for her, she could at least make the choice as to whether or not she would allow herself to step into it. She could wrest that much control from fate.

And so she sat down in the bay window and pulled the bag to her. She took the contents out and laid them beside her on the window seat. Book and painting. She chose to open the painting first. The tape was brittle and came easily away from the paper. She unwrapped the paper, but then she couldn’t move.

All she could do was stare at the familiar painting and feel the storm clouds leave that distant horizon to come swirling around her.

Paddyjack lay on her lap.

Her painting.

But it couldn’t be here. It had been destroyed in the fire with the others. She had seen it bum.

Unless memory had played her false and that had been the dream.

There was a knock on her door, but she didn’t answer it. She didn’t even hear it.

Like Gypsies In The Wood

Every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn’t bother to do it. It is a message

in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It’s saying, “I’m here and I believe that you are

somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime.

—Attributed to Jeanette Winterson

I

Newford, December 1974

As the year wound to an end, Izzy could see her life spinning more and more out of her control.

There were just too many things to get done, and trying to juggle them all left her in what felt like a perpetual state of bewildered frenzy. There were the preparations for her first solo show at Albina’s gallery. She had her studies at both the university and with Rushkin. She was trying to maintain some vague semblance of a social life—or at least see John more than once a week and not be so tired when they did get together that she didn’t either fall asleep on him, or feel too cranky to properly enjoy his company.

She had no idea how she kept everything in balance or managed to get anything done at all. Still, by the end of December, not only was she keeping up with everything, but she’d still squeezed in the time to finish three paintings at the studio in back of Professor Dapple’s house.

The studio had originally been a greenhouse, but the professor had converted it into studio space for the use of those gifted students who, for one reason or another, didn’t have any other facility in which to work. At the time that Izzy started going, Jilly was the only other artist using the place. Since it had its own outside door, they could work in there at any time of the day or night without disturbing the professor. Jilly was the one who had christened it the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio after the professor’s cranky manservant, Olaf Goonasekara, who would glower at them through the greenhouse windows whenever he happened to be passing by.

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