Reality and the Dream Space

'Real life is letting men fuck you over their desks (and enjoying it, which is somehow the worst thing). Real life is regularly running out of money, then food. Real life is having no proper heating. Real life is physical. Give me books instead: give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book; I'd give anything for that'. - The End of Mr. Y

So much of this I agree with. Novels are escapism. They are perfect.

Then I can't help but let my mind wander back to 'Inkheart' and I start to think of the possibilities of being part of a book. The future is always set. Typically the baddies lose and the heroes win. Always wrapped in the internal cycle. I suppose it would be a little like groundhog day.

I remember doing an exercise in class when we discussed when does the author end, and when does the book begin- similarly, how much of the book is down to the reader. All interesting things to think about.

In some cases when I close the book that is the end.

However, when I think of other books such as Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach' and 'George's Marvellous Medicine'. To me the characters in this book feel so alive. Perhaps as I read it I was younger these things of fantasy were allowed a playground in my mind and because I created that connection with them at that time, I can still imagine them as vividly as I first did- I don't limit them to the end of the novel.

Occasionally this happens now when I read fiction as an adult, but admittedly more often than not, when I finish a novel I think over the plot, the characters and the story and tend to analyse them rather than entertain the idea of their futures after the novel.

For me novels have become a dreamspace, to which I come crashing out of after the conclusion.