Product Description

The first time Peter Diggs saw Amaryllis she was at a bus stop where the street sign said Balsamic, although there was nothing vinegary about the place. The bus was unthinkably tall, made of yellow, orange and pink rice paper, lit from within like a Japanese lantern. That was a dream, but where this romance goes as the dream begins to intersect reality is nothing that a reader can be prepared for. 'Trust me, I'm a weirdo,' says Amaryllis as she and Peter embark on their nocturnal experimentation, which leaves no one, on quite the same footing with reality.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #208447 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review

In the darkness the present lost its hold and the past, stirring in its sleep, turned its face to me and whispered a name.

Amaryllis Night and Day follows one man into the roots of love in a tender and unsettling journey of intermingling dream and memory. Successful painter Peter Diggs is pulled into the dreams--and secret life--of Amaryllis, a mysterious and beautiful woman with a desperate link to his past. As he struggles to resist or understand their deepening connection, he finds himself more and more disrupted by the shifting floors of reality and illusion, and ever more uncertain of what lies ahead. Where the book attempts furtive reaches into the unfamiliar, it stumbles into the queer compromise of allusion. Where it attempts to dislodge conventions, it drops into an affected discord of peripheral detail. Where it succeeds, however, is in the author's impressive ability to withdraw, to relax his grip and allow the pervasive incompleteness to remain undefined; and to ride the strange crude wave until it breaks.

As is true of Hoban's other works--Turtle Diary, The Medusa Frequency, Angelica's Grotto, to name a few--the intricate story is not pressed or jerked out, but seems to quietly rise from the dream fog. Love and unusual meetings, improbable surfaces and shimmering paradoxes, fears and apparitions, curious irritations and a very real sensitivity combine to make Amaryllis Night and Day a minor masterpiece. --Michael Kedda

Review
'Hoban writes with such wide-eyed wonder as to suggest that keeping the beautiful mysteries of the world intact is more important than solving them' METRO

About the Author
Russell Hoban is the author of many extraordinary novels including THE LION OF BOAZ-JACHIN AND JACHIN-BOAZ, TURTLE DIARY, PILGERMANN, KLEINZEIT and most recently, ANGELICA'S GROTTO, all available from Bloomsbury. He has also written some classic books for children. He lives in London.

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Customer Reviews

A beautiful, engaging book where dream life becomes real
I have to say that what first attracted me to this book was it's beautifully designed cover and after reading the first line, I had to force myself to read the rest of it slowly, like eating an expensive chocolate bar with a pin, because it was so good, I just didn't want it to end. Each chapter is short (tantalizingly bitesized!), which gets you straight into the rhythm of the waking and dreaming life of the main character, Peter Diggs. With exquisitly simple yet somehow vastly expansive language, the author brings us into the dream world in which Peter finds himself, guided by the enigmatic girl he meets there, then alternatly contrasts this with waking hours, spent in and around London. The author imbues moments of everyday life with as much meaning and strange beauty as the dreams, making a stroll out of South Kensington tube station something to savour and a walk in Islington feel like an adventure full of possibilities. Reading his descriptions of London allowed me to see the city through new eyes and with a fresh enthusiasm...(anyone feeling jaded with London living should give it a try for this alone) and I especially loved reading it on the tube as it made me feel very differently about who my fellow passengers might be! Hoban succeeds so totally in writing believably about such a difficult to describe subject, (dreams), that it feels as if you have DREAMT what he writes, as it looses nothing in the translation onto paper. This, combined with the gorgeous presentation (right down to the choice of typeface) makes Amaryllis Night and Day a perfect book, both as an object AND a piece of writing. It's so engaging that you might even find, as I did, that the characters manage to find their way into your own dreams!

Quite lovely...
... soothing, melancholy and like trying to grab hold of mist. It doesn't seem like it should work- try explaining to someone what it's about and you immediately sound unbelievably pretentious- but Hoban is one of the very few writers who could succeed with such an unlikely premise, and to succeed as beautifully as this without being mawkish, 'artistic' or over-explanatory is quite an achievement.

It's a wonderful book for late at night- if you're away from your lover, read them a bit just before you drift off to sleep, and they should turn up in your dreams with you.

Magical
A very short, profoundly affecting book.
Wonderful, can't stop thinking about it.