Gift of the Magi
Madhukar Shukla
ALPHABET OF DREAMS by Susan Fletcher Simon Pulse, 2008, 432 pp., £3.88
November 2008, volume 32, No 11

The art of great story-telling lies in the ability to retell a worn-out old tale—but in a style that is delightfully engaging, maintains its grip on one’s attention, and it only gradually dawns to the reader that this was, after all, a tale s/he knew about all along. Yet, it surprises because one had never thought about the story from this particular perspective. Susan Fletcher’s Alphabet of Dreams is one such masterful feat of story-telling.

Thankfully, the blurb on the book says just minimally enough to kindle one’s curiosity about the tale hidden inside the cover. And so, as I read through the book—and the story unfolded—there were a number of ways in which I could reconstruct what this story is all about. In a way, Alphabet of Dreams is not one straightforward narrative; it is more than one tale, skillfully interwoven into each other.

Mathematician Martin Gardner had once summarized the two archetypes of all stories: ‘somebody goes on a journey’, and ‘a stranger comes to town’. This book is clearly built on the first archetype. Located in ancient Persia, it is an exciting fairy-tale about the magical gift of the young kid, Babuk, who can dream the future for others; about his older teenage sister, Mitra, who longs for their lost opulence of a noble lineage; and about the journey and adventure which they undertake to solve the riddle of one of Babuk’s strangest dreams.

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