Michael Hicks's Reviews > Captain Clive's Dreamworld

It's difficult to separate the political commentary from the exegis of plot in Captain Clive's Dreamworld, given how closely the story reflects American politics in the Trump era. The titular Dreamworld is a theme park in the vein of Disney World, a magical place of optimism where all of your dreams can come true, and it is supported by the small, whitebread community of Angels and Hope. Angels and Hope is the perfect representation of the American Dream and the idyllic nostalgia for a great Christian-American past that never was, a crime-free suburb where everyone knows your name, even if you've only just arrived, and neighbors stop you to deliver freshly baked cookies and wave cheerfully from windows. It's the 1950s of Leave it to Beaver brought to life in roaring color. But, much like that classic sitcom, it's all a falsity, little more than a pleasant imagining that ignores the reality of the world surrounding it.

The builder of all this, Captain Clive, is a (supposedly) self-made, super-wealthy capitalist with two creepy, sneering children, and a money-grubbing wife. To the denizens of Angels and Hope, he's a messianic figure who, with his seasonally themed neighborhoods of white colonials, has made this particular corner of white America great again and who has inspired a disturbingly cultish following who perform abhorrent deeds in his name. According to his followers cum worshippers, he's dined with Jesus and signed the Declaration of Independence on the way to building this slice of Americana perfection. Strangely, though, Dreamworld itself is largely empty and disused, save for the locals, and the hotels meant to sustain an imagined thriving tourist industry are equally desolate.

Angels and Hope seems like a town kept alive by little more than the power of dreams itself, but what really keeps the monorail running on time is a far darker secret, one that recently transplanted Deputy Sam Hardy intends to discover. Assigned to Angels and Hope, Hardy arrives in town under a cloud of suspicion after the murder of a hooker, a reminder that life outside the picturesque dreams of Captain Clive is far from ideal, a brutal interrupt of reality on the perfectly crafted illusion that has been cultivated there.

Captain Clive's Dreamworld represents an interesting culmination in the career of Jon Bassoff thus far, falling somewhere in-between the surrealism of Factory Town and the more straightforward crime noir of his recent The Lantern Man. Angels and Hope strikes a chord that's more Twin Peaks than Mayfield, albeit one that is far less soap operatic and cut with a far meaner and more cynical edge. There's no Log Lady, but we do get three Macbethian witches and the occasional detour into the violent dangers of group think and collective violence. While there are plenty of oddities surrounding the town of Angels and Hope, it's people, and Hardy himself, the narrative is less reliant on the dream logic of stories like The Drive-Thru Crematorium and the delusory descriptions and brain-bending scenarios Bassoff's dedicated fans are accustomed to feel a bit lighter this time around.

This is not necessarily a bad thing at all, though. Bassoff clearly has a lot to say about the current state of Americana, our collective dreams and ambitions, and the stubborn, willful persistence of blind followers - the damage they're willing to cause and the immorality they'll look away from in order to make their own conditions comfortable, or at least bearable. There's a lot going on this book and Bassoff explores it all in gritty, unflinching detail, even, on some occasions, daring you to look away. There are moments that you hope are little more than a dream, but as with most fantasies, there's a stark reality hidden beneath, tucked away in the darkest shadows and festering, waiting to be discovered.