|Review: Sidney Sheldon – Tell Me Your Dreams | |You have to understand… Sidney Sheldon has a very special place in my literary heart. When I was in sixth grade, and attending a Catholic | |school (yes, taught by nuns), I snuck If Tomorrow Comes from my Grandfather’s bookshelf and proceeded to write a book report on it, leaving | |nothing out, from the prison rapes, the escapes, the jewelry heists… My classmates loved it.
My teachers thought my parents should know what I | |was reading. | | | |At any rate, I have since read everything that Mr. Sheldon has written and been very pleased with each… which is why it pains me to give this | |book a less than stellar review. | | |I’ve been rolling a few review ideas around in my head regarding this novel, and I just can’t come up with any way to do it without revealing a| |few major plot points. But, as the plot points I will reveal are revealed to the reader less than half way through the book, I don’t feel as | |bad as I might normally, if they weren’t revealed until the last three pages. So, the disclaimer: This review does reveal a few major spoilers | |in the plot. | | | | |Plot and Characters: | | | |The novel opens introducing us to the heroine, Ashley Patterson. Although she cannot prove it, she feels and believes that she is being stalked| |by someone with murderous intentions.
She comes home from work (in Silicon Valley) one day to find that all the lights in her apartment have | |been turned on. Another day she sees that her lingerie drawer has been ransacked. | | | |In the next two chapters, we are introduced to Toni Prescott and Alette Peters who work at the same company with Ashley. Toni is six years | |younger than Ashley, born in England, she is a bit of a “wild child” with serious maternal issues.
She is a wonderful singer, but her inner | |thoughts keep flashing back to her mother telling her she was no good and would never amount to anything. Toni likes to dress provocatively and| |go club hopping on the weekends. She despises Ashley because Ashley is everything she herself isn’t. Alette is eight years younger than Ashley. | |Born in Rome, she is a soft spoken, sweet artist who also has maternal issues. Though people around her keep telling her that she is an | |extraordinarily talented painter, she keeps hearing her mother tell her the contrary. | | |Though she currently has a very close relationship with her father, Ashley is haunted by the memory of her father forcing her to leave her High| |School sweetheart, Jim. She had planned to run away and be married to Jim, but he never showed up at the train station. When Ashley attends her| |ten year reunion, she learns that Jim was viciously murdered and castrated the morning they were supposed to meet. She is stunned and | |immediately suspects her father.
When a man at work who has been bothering her meets the same fate after she complains to her father about him,| |Ashley is convinced that her father is behind these murders. | | | |On a business trip to Canada, Toni meets her Internet boyfriend for the first time. He presents her with a beautiful emerald ring and is then | |murdered and castrated. Alette’s artist boyfriend back home in California is also killed in this same fashion. Upon returning home, Ashley | |finds on her bathroom mirror the message “You will die”.
The deputy assigned to protect her is found the next morning in the alley, dead and | |castrated. When the emerald ring given to Toni is found in Ashley’s jewelry box and her fingerprints and DNA at each murder scene, she is | |arrested. | | | |At this point, we are a little less than half way through the book. If you haven’t guessed from the review (I had already guessed from the | |novel), Ashley suffers from MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder).
Toni and Alette are both alters which had been created by a traumatic | |experience (when Ashley was six and eight years old). | | | |From this point backward, the novel had been gripping and enticing. I couldn’t put it down. After this, I was thoroughly disappointed. Ashley’s| |father persuades a criminal lawyer turned corporate lawyer, David Singer to return a favor and represent Ashley.
The second half of the novel | |deals with the trial, the fighting psychiatrists: (“Multiple Personality Disorder is a real disorder”, “Multiple Personality Disorder isn’t a | |real disorder”), and Ashley’s treatment and introduction to her two alters in a state asylum. The most interesting part of this section was | |learning the horrific event that caused her fragile psyche to shatter as it did. | Meet Ashley Patterson, the brainy, babelicious “computer whiz” and confused heroine of Tell Me Your Dreams.
Although she has a cushy job at Global Computer Graphics, a fast-growing start-up in Silicon Valley, her life falls short of fulfilling. She’s lonely, shy, and absolutely convinced she’s being stalked. What’s worse, the only sympathetic ear around is her father, Dr. Patterson, the heartless heart surgeon, who has the charm of an electric eel and the compassion of a tarantula. Given her options, Ashley looks to the heavens for support and offers up an ultimatum to the Almighty: “I’ll make a deal with you, God.
If it doesn’t rain, it means that everything is all right, that I’ve been imagining everything. ” Of course, it starts raining buckets just paragraphs later, setting off a car alarm of an omen about our computer cutie’s fate. Enter Toni Prescott and Alette Peters. They both work with Ashley at Global Computer Graphics, but the similarities end there. Toni is a saucy, British vixen with a penchant for Internet dating and discotheques. La bella Italiana Alette, on the other hand, is a wannabe artist who prefers quiet, dreamy weekends withbeefcake painters.
Reminiscent of junior high school, Toni and Alette do their best to keep Ashley out of their cool clique, but find it difficult when a string of murders irrevocably binds them together. Based on a true story and laden with realistic details–not to mention a whopper of an ending–Tell Me Your Dreams is vintage Sheldon. However, there is one necessary caveat: avoid moviegoer types who insist on telling you the entire plot before you have a chance to see it. You should be doing this anyway, but take extra care with this book. Once the surprise ending is blown, so is the fun in reading it.
Novel written by Sidney Sheldon, the telling of the problems experienced by three beautiful women. Three women are involved in a series of complex murder cases. From the investigations conducted by the police, much evidence points to one of three women. Murder mystery with psychological deviations gives an interesting plot for this novel. The case of multiple personality has become a controversy, for the psychiatrist. Some consider the disease there is a double personality, but there are also some who believe this disease is only one form of stress and trauma.
In a novel that includes a criminal genre, Sidney Sheldon wrote a fictional story based on real cases of Multiple Personalities Disorder, or commonly called MPD. This book won the title of International Best Seller. This title proves that this book really worth reading. In this novel, described five cases of murder with the same pattern. After the victims have intercourse, the victim was brutally murdered. The story in this novel, set in a very compelling plot, from the beginning of the story until the climax of a very tense. Sidney Sheldon also displays an anti-climax that makes the reader stunned.
However, in this novel there are elements of sex and the language used is more severe than adolescent novel that is less suitable for children. The cases and problems makes this book interesting. These are not ordinary problems where they involved in series of complex murder cases. From the investigations conducted by the police, much evidence point to one of three women. Murder mystery with psychological disorders gives an interesting plot for this novel. At a glance: • Author: Sidney Sheldon • First Published: 1998 • Type of Work: Novel • Genres: Long fiction
