Dreamover is about Nico and Amber, childhood friends who on the precipice of graduating 8th grade, confess their feelings for each other and spend a blissful summer in young love before entering high school and encountering the all too relatable challenges that come with it. Speaking to Dani at NYCC they told me how they began working on elements of the project after moving home post college. Many of us have been in that very same place, returning home after a period away, arriving a whole new person, about to play anthropologist sifting through our own past. It’s a unique experience being surrounded by your old self; living in something so familiar yet disconnected from who you currently are.
In that dual state of being, one foot in the past, one in the present, Diaz found Dreamover, an immersive, relatable, beautifully rendered snapshot of adolescence. There are few things in this world more intensely pervasive and overwhelming than your first real romantic relationship. It is your whole life. Everything is high stakes. During that transition to high school, you’re gaining more independence, you feel so grown up, and yet, you’re still so naive (usually) about real stress, real stakes, real life. You’re still just a kid. The interesting thing about Dreamover is the way it so perfectly captures this heightened state by saying and doing less. Dani expressed their nerves about writing for the first time as a primarily visual artist. But it’s that exact earnest innocence of a “rookie” writer that imbues Dreamover with exactly what it needs.
Faced with the stresses of high school and increasing isolation as their friends get tired of Nico and Amber spending every second together, the two retreat into each other and one night, drifting off while playing video games, find that they have fallen, together, into a lucid dream. This is where Dreamover truly sings. The way it compresses all the escalated emotions and experiences of a young relationship into flashes and fragments – the infatuation, the irritation, the imagination, the deterioration – it all flows through the bubble of the kind of dream you don’t want to wake up from. A state in which you have control. It’s intoxicating even as it degrades. This dream oscillates, in Diaz’s beautiful illustrations, between darkness and whimsy; from fear, despair and anxiety, to euphoria.
Dani Diaz chooses their words carefully. We’re seeing glimpses into this period in the characters’ lives and it doesn’t take much to communicate what they’re going through. It’s primal and exceedingly human. Dreamover evokes Miyazaki and Ghibli, the way those films let the story breath, unafraid of silence, or at least an absence of talking. Ghibli stories feel fully realized, like they bleed beyond the edges of what we’re seeing. If we could just step into the frame and make a left or a right, we might find ourselves experiencing even more than we already have. Diaz does the same in their debut. We’re dropped in medias res into Nico and Amber’s life. We don’t get an introduction or any exposition to explain who they are. We’re shown it. We feel it. We’re locked in immediately. I thought a lot about Miyazaki’s Ponyo while reading. The headstrong young girl, the innocence of young love, the way the bubble bursts when reality crashes in. It’s easy to find parallels between Dreamover and many YA works. It’s universally relatable and easy to plug yourself and your own touchstones and experiences into.
Much like the dream you don’t want to wake up from, I didn’t want Dreamover to end. Reading the novel felt like rolling through the waves; invigorating, overwhelming, seemingly endless. I wanted to stay and eavesdrop on the lives of Nico and Amber; their friends Drew, Stella, and Grace. I wanted to find out how they’d navigate the rest of high school, if Drew would find a boyfriend, if they’d dream again and how the dream might change. Dani spoke about an idea they had for a follow up to Dreamover that I simply cannot get out of my mind. It so beautifully mirrors and continues through the door they’ve opened here. I hope that idea blossoms like young love because I need that dream to become a reality.
Dreamover is available now wherever you get books. You can find out more about Dani Diaz and Dreamover at www.theartofmemoryfuel.com
Be First to Comment