“He feared his dreams.” #traindreams

Books lead on to other books… When I was offered the chance to review Denis Johnson‘s “Jesus’ Son” for Shiny New Books (I’ll link when this is live), I was reminded that I had also intended to read his “Train Dreams” for some years. As I mentioned previously, Johnson’s “Already Dead” was a book I read and loved when it first came out in the late 1990s (and it’s still on the shelves) but for some reason I had never got to his other work. “Jesus’ Son” was his first collection, but I think “Train Dreams” is his best-known title; and so inevitably I had to send for a copy and finally get round to reading it! First published in this form in 2011, “Train…” is a novella which packs a heck of a punch. The book opens with the main character, Robert Grainier, involved in the near-murder of a Chinese worker in 1917; and it goes on to follow his life in spare yet lyrical prose until his death in 1968. Grainier is a day labourer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century, and takes…