Machine Dreams Paperback – 2 Sept. 1985

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'Machine Dreams' traces the lives of the members of a lower-middle-class American family from the late 1930s to the 1970s. Mitch is raised by his Aunt Bess and Uncle Clayden after his mother Icey (odd name) deserts him. He serves in the Pacific region during World War II - the effect of his experiences, coupled with his love for Bess and Clayden's fragile daughter Katie, encourage him to eventually settle down and find a wife. He picks Jean, a sensible woman whose hope of a serious career ended when her mother got cancer and Jean became her carer. The couple marry, and over the next few years have two children - a daughter with the peculiar name of Danner and a son, Billy - and try to pursue the American Dream. Unfortunately, this goes wrong when Mitch's concrete business fails, and he has to take various jobs as a salesman. Jean, suddenly hit with ambition, goes back to college and determines to get a proper job - which causes increasing friction within the marriage. Meanwhile, the children must make up their minds if they will commit seriously to college or find local jobs, and drafting to fight in the Vietnam war is looming...As a portrait of life in small-town West Virginia in the second part of the 20th century, and of lives of ordinary American people during this period, 'Machine Dreams' is very good. Phillips vividly evokes her characters' limited lives and often frustrated ambitions, and evokes the periods she is describing very well. She is particularly good on depicting how women struggle for independence in a male-dominated society, and both Bess and Jean are particularly memorable characters. I felt that she also portrayed well the terrible effect the Vietnam War had on America, and the frustration of men like Mitch who came back from tough experiences during World War II and struggled to make a decent life for themselves at home. Phillips's writing style is often elegant, and I like the way she shifts point of view from one character to another.However, the limited lives of the characters can cause frustrations. The world in which Mitch, Jean and their children live is intensely claustrophobic. Few of the characters have any cultural or intellectual aspirations - and if they do, like Jean or Bess, they don't really talk about them. Nobody ever talks about books they've enjoyed reading, or shows any interest in music, art, films (other than popular releases), European culture, or, really, travel. Nobody ever finds that learning and education is really a key to a better life - Jean, at least, may become financially independent through it, but it doesn't seem to make her happy. Nobody takes any pleasure in nature either - though Virginia is meant to be one of the prettier bits of the USA - and pets appear largely to be there in order to meet depressing deaths. Even though Danner and Billy go to college, there's a sense of joyless duty about it - and both of them drop out. Everyone's lives appear to revolve around the same things - square meals, trips to dances or drive-ins, shopping trips to the city, television programmes - and it begins to get somewhat monotonous. Small-town life doesn't have to feel so desperately limiting (Willa Cather's novels show that there could be cultured and intelligent people even in out-of-the-way-places).The book is also very depressing for a good deal of the time. Mitch and Jean's marriage is a disaster almost from the start, and disintegrates slowly and painfully. Mitch never manages to achieve anything he really wants - his own business, a good relationship with his children, money - and ends up permanently disappointed, seeking comfort by living with his old aunt. Jean acquires independence but gets little pleasure from it or anything much other than her children - which, as we see, also has a depressing side to it. Bess is widowed reasonably young when Clayden drops down dead in the business he's run with Mitch. Danner has a bad relationship prior to college, can't settle down at college, can't get used to her parents' divorce and goes off the rails due to the events of the Vietnam War - with no real sign that she'll ever get properly back on an even keel. Billy loses his girlfriend - the bizarrely named Kato - and can't cope at college; he is also destined for the killing fields of Vietnam. I struggle, in retrospect, to think of anything good that happens to anyone in this book, other than Jean getting her college qualification, Katie making it through to adulthood and Bess remaining much loved by her nephew and daughter.There are some lovely, vivid episodes in 'Machine Dreams' - Mitch watching over his little cousin Katie when he takes her to the cinema; Jean's feeling of achievement when she gets her college degree; the sense that Bess creates a haven in her home. And it does evoke American small-town life vividly. But in the end I found the characters' extremely limited and often angry perspectives on life, coupled with the book's endless train of misfortunes, made it a book that was much easier to admire than to love, and not one that I think I will revisit.

Delivery was quick but the description of the book's condition was inaccurate. It was used but certainly not used - good. There was quite a lot of wear and tear to the spine.

If you like a good American short story you'll love this. Beautiful prose and haunting images