I read Hideji Oda’s A Patch of Dreams (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) over the weekend, and I was clearly pretty intrigued by it, because I later had a nightmare that seemed to be based loosely on the story. It’s not that the manga is especially terrifying (though there are moments), but it clearly planted enough food for subconscious thought that I could find my dream self being stalked in a Paris suburb and, immediately upon waking, come to the conclusion that the dream was all Oda’s fault.
It’s possible that I’m placing too much causality on A Patch of Dreams and that it could more likely be pinned on the egg rolls I had for dinner. Either way, it’s an intriguing book, one I’m not quite ready to review formally, but it certainly conveys dream logic effectively. It’s one of those books that puts you in a sort of mental loop – maybe your response to the initial reading isn’t overwhelming, but as you consider aspects of the story, more and more thematic possibilities emerge.
