I was explaining to my sister today, about my project and its importance, at least to me, but also to the rest of the countries that these books have been published in. One of the books that I told her about was the one that I need to write about now, Brian Moore's The Great Victorian Collection. It was the winner of the Governor General in 1975, the year before Marian Engel's Bear won the GG, and the same year that Michael Shaara's big, marvelous book on the battle of Gettysburg The Killer Angels won the Pulitzer Prize in the United States. It is noteworthy to talk about this book in the context of those novels, but also in the context of the prizes as a whole, because this book is so vastly different, like Bear, from any of the other books I've read thus far. This book is almost borderline science fiction/fantasy, a style of novel that I have not yet seen win the prize, and I have now read over 90 of the combined books. This is about a man who has a dream, and the dream comes true, and then the dream becomes a nightmare. We've all had dreams that we wished would never end, that we wished would come true. I remember being a little kid, no more that four years old, and dreaming that I found chest upon chest of diamonds, diamonds the size of my fist. Imagine my dismay, when I woke up and discovered that my room was NOT filled with chests of diamonds. Well, I suppose I can't tell you what it would be like for me if the diamonds really were there when I woke up. I think it could be wonderful, but also very very frightening, for what if my nightmares came true as well? Well, Dr. Anthony Maloney experiences all of this himself. The Great Victorian Collection is what Dr. Maloney dreams up. On his way home from a conference, Dr. Maloney decides to stay in the small town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California for the weekend before returning to Montreal on that Monday night. The first night he stays in the hotel he has a magnificent dream, in which he pulls away the curtain of his hotel room window, and in the vacant lot next to the hotel in which he is staying is an immense collection of Victoriana. For Dr. Maloney, this is a dream come true, because that is the field in which he is an expert. The catch is, when he wakes up in the morning, he wakes up from the dream. Well, not really. In the morning, he wakes up, pulls back the curtain of his hotel room and...the collection is there. Still there. Thus begins the next year of his life. Dr. Maloney goes out to walk amongst the collection and it is amazing, it is pristine, it is perfect. There are pieces that he has only ever read about, there are pieces that are only in one other place in the world, some house or museum in England. There is an entire room with all kinds of hidden compartments that store all kinds of pieces of S & M equipment and one of the largest collections of Victorian Erotica the world has seen. There is a marvelous glass fountain, there are complete period costumes. For someone such as Dr. Maloney, it is indeed a dream come true. For the manager of the hotel it is a great big nuisance, he doesn't understand where it came from, but it has to go. Dr. Maloney tries to explain that he didn't bring it from anywhere or move it from anywhere, he dreamt it up. Then, the reporters begin to arrive. And the questions begin, and for a while no one believes him, and then they actually do. At first Dr. Maloney loves the attention, loves leading tours of reporters and even eventually visitors through the collection, showing off secret compartments, etc., but then he begins to feel trapped by the collection. This is especially evident one day when he just wants to get away and go to the beach with a reporter and his girlfriend. As he drives away from the collection the weather starts to deteriorate and then it begins to rain...Dr. Maloney panics and returns to the collection as soon as possible, to check on it. There is indeed some damage to some of the pieces due to the weather, so then he has to get tarps and such to make sure that the collection is protected from the elements. This is the first indication that the dream may not be a dream after all. Maloney realizes that he can't leave the collection and then that starts to freak him out. He has two obsessions then, one he desires, and one he does not. One is the girlfriend of the reporter Vaterman who befriends him. The woman's name is Mary Ann. The other is the dream that continues outside of his hotel room window, and also in his sleep. He starts to dream that he is seeing the entire collection through a surveillance television. It is a dream from which he cannot escape, unless he doesn't sleep or drinks himself into such a stupor that his mind is blank. He tries to self medicate with pills, but even that doesn't work. The dream returns. It is this dream that will eventually drive him to his death and drive him to the destruction of his relationship with Mary Ann. This book is also interesting because throughout it and at the end is reference to Dr. Spector's work on this whole situation along with Vanderbilt University. For someone, while this was all occuring, decided of course that it was worthwile studying this phenomenon. For, as the man deteriorates, so does the collection. What this makes one think about is how connected are we to our dreams and how much do our dreams define us? Or also, to what extent do we follow our dreams or let them control us? When you look at it through that thematic lens, we see exactly how the novel fits into the prize history, for so much of literature is about our dreams and our paths to get there or how we get derailed, and/or how the "derailment" as it were leads us to discover more about ourselves and our real dreams. This book looks at a very specific dream, a somewhat unrealistic dream, but isn't that the art of fiction? Pablo Picasso once said, "art is not truth, art is merely a lie that make us realize the truth." Perhaps that is what this slim odd novel is meant to do, and in its somewhat absurdity, it holds its place quite well. PPs-46, GGs-41.