7 YOUNG ADULT BOOKS WITH ONEIRIC WORLDS AND MAGICAL AMBIENCE

A list of 7 eventful books with oneiric or surreal atmospheres, to feel like you are reading a strange dream.

 Whether for the atmosphere, the magical or supernatural events in the plot, or the absurd, nonsensical choices of the protagonist, these books and the images they can evoke will surely give you the feeling that you entered in a strange dream.

1. PIRANESI by Susanne Clark

Genre: fantasy

Piranesi by Susanne Clark, winner of the Woman's prize for fiction in 2021, was one of the best novels I read in 2022. What I found the most marvelous of this book was the ambiance because the story is set in a giant, lost (and often flooded) labyrinth, full of immense halls and statues of men and animals. That's why it is the perfect example of a story with a oneiric or surreal setting.

The main protagonist, called Piranesi, is the only one who lives in this lonely place, but a mysterious man called "The Other" visits him once a week. Every time Piranesi, the protagonist, wanders in this unexplored and abandoned labyrinth, he regularly loses his memory. Hence, he keeps a diary to remember the things he sees. One day, strange messages written by a  mysterious person start to appear on the Walls. Who is trying to communicate with Piranesi?

Giovanni Battista Piranesi | Group of columns which support two arches of a great courtyard... (Gruppo di Colonne, che regge due archi d'un grande Cortile...), from "Prima Parte di Architettura, e Prospettive" | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A curiosity: The setting of the book is inspired by the architectural work Le Carceri (The Prisons) of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an Italian architect, greatly admired also by Horace Walpole, writer of The Castle of Otranto. Walpole was probably inspired by le Carceri for the building of his villa Strawberry Hills, where he had a dream that inspired the writing of his most famous novel, the first gothic story of all time.

Probably because of the ambiance, reading this book I felt like I entered a world it only exists in dreams when the eyes are shut and we are completely isolated in ourselves and our brains. 

Reference:

https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Piranesi/24014796

2. THE BARON IN THE TREES (Original title: IL BARONE RAMPANTE) by Italo Calvino

Genre: coming-of-age novel

Have you ever dreamed when you were a kid to escape from home and go live in a treehouse forever? Well, the protagonist of this story, Cosimo, who is twelve years old, not only dreamed it but also did it. This absurd decision of the son of the baron Arminio Piovasco di Rondò to never ever touch the earth again with his feet and live on the trees will cause lots of  problems to his rich and aristocratic family.  On the trees Cosimo lives a great number of phenomenal and hilarious adventures, but the older  he gets, the more we ask ourselves: At the end of the story will he ever stop behaving like a child and take finally his responsibilities as a baron, abandoning his beloved existence on the trees? 

This novel by Italo Calvino, set in Italy, Liguria, shortly after the French Revolution,  will make you feel like you are reading a strange fairytale before going to bed. 

image from Pinterest

3. THE STARLESS SEA by Erin Morgenstern

Genre: Fantasy

“It is a sanctuary for storytellers and storykeepers and storylovers. They eat and sleep and dream surrounded by chronicles and histories and myths.” (the enfasis is mine). This quote from The Starless Sea summarizes perfectly what this novel is about: a magic place for those who love reading and diving deep into a story or a book to escape their reality. The protagonist of The Starless Sea is the introverted Zachary. One day he finds an old book in the library of his college, donated by an unknown book collector. What he will read in this book will change his life forever, and will force him to leave his college in search of answers, only to discover an enchanted place where written stories and impossible situations become reality.

the book cover

 

4. HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE by Diana Wynne Jones

Genre: Fantasy

Lots of people have seen the famous Studio Ghibli film adaptation by Miyazaki. However, not everyone knows that the book THE ERRANT CASTLE OF HOWL by Diana Wayne Jones is as good as the famous movie. The resolute character of Sophie, the strange and funny one of Howl, and the adventures they have together to undo their spells make the readers feel like they are in a sweet and colorful dream. The book of the ERRANT CASTLE OF HOWL starts exactly like the film: a young hatter, Sophie, meets one day a terrible evil witch in her shop and becomes a victim of her enchanted spell. Transformed tragically into an old woman, she will leave her home and her job in search of the Wizard Howl and his moving castle 

 However, some elements of the novel's plot differ completely from the movie directed by Miyazaki, and that's why this book is worth reading. If you then end up liking the novel, there are also other two books of  Diana Wayne Jones to read where we find again Sophie and Howl: a retelling of Aladin, Castle in the Air, and a story of a young wizard's assistant, House of Many Ways.

A curiosity: The spell against Howl is nothing more than a poem by John Donne called Go Catch a Falling Star, and it is about the impossibility of finding a fair woman. Diana W. Jones has only added two more verses at the end of it, to adapt the poem to her story.

5. HERE, ONLY HERE by Christelle Dabos

Genre: fantasy

Reading this book feels like having one of those anxious nightmares about the traumatic experiences of middle school.  In Here, Only Here by Christelle Dabos, the typical sense of anxiety and fear felt during the preadolescence years  is  mixed with the supernatural. The result is a strange but interesting chorus of teenage voices that try to understand what is happening in their surreal school, in the story referred as "Here", and also inside them. The writing style can be perceived  as childish and mundane, but in reality, it hides deep levels of meanings that cannot be easily interpreted.

Note: Lots of delicate themes like bullying and depression are indirectly touched in the book. 

the book cover of 
Here, only here

6. MARINA by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Genre: Thriller, Romance

Marina narrates the story of a lonely 15-year-old boy, Oscar, who lives in a bording school in Barcelona. During one of his free days, he pass on a beautiful mansion. He cannot resist the temptation and breaks in the house, where he meets  and become friend with a young girl named Marina and his father. One day Marina brings Oscar to an abandoned cemetry, to show him "the lady in black", a strange woman that comes there the same day and the same hour of every month.  Afer taking the decision to follow her and solve the mistery, they will be dragged into a dangerous adventure in a post-war Barcelona.

I read this book years ago, but the gothic atmosphere that Zafón, the author, was able to recreate, together with the scary images of puppets and of the abandoned theater are still vivid in my head like the memory of an old childhood nightmare.

A curiosity: this book was the author's favourite novel of alls he wrote. He said in the prefatory note of Marina that in the story he left a part of himself that could never come back again.

the original book cover

Reference:

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Book-Review-Marina-by-Carlos-Ruiz-Zafon

7. ALICE ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (and Alice through the Looking Glass) by Lewis Carrol

Genre: literary nosense

And how could I make a series of book with a nightmersih or dreamish vibe without mentionin the most nosensical novel of the English Literature: Alice adventures in Wonderland. This classic is incredibly popular and the story is known by everyone: the little girl Alice falls (or dreams to fall) in a rabbit hole, and enters the famous Wonderland, where the rules of the strict reality she lives in are completely turned upside down. I personally recommend to read the masterfully illustrated edition of Minalima, with interactive drawings, in order to dive deep even more in the original story that narrates the strange adventures of Alice in Wonderland. This edition conteins also Alice through the looking glass, another story by Lewis Carrol where Alice goes back to Wonderland through a sort of magic mirror.

This is the front cover of my edition by Minalima

and here's the spine, rich in little and curated details

an example of the colorful illustrations of this edition

I hope with this article to have given you some recommandations for your next reading!