Three Dreams in the Key of G

Sam Jordison in The Guardian:

Hold tight. Because I’m now going to try to explain what I think is happening in Three Dreams in the Key of G. As the title hints, there are three narrative strands, although they are not particularly dreamy. The first contains the journal entries of Jean Ome, a mother of two children living in Ulster and married to a man who has connections to violent Protestant paramilitaries. These journal entries have been written infrequently and with no definite purpose by an intelligent and frustrated woman trapped by circumstances who is prone to prolixity. Just to make things extra difficult, they have all been muddled up and are presented out of order.

The second strand is made up of internet messages from Jean Ohm, an equally verbose voice, but one under severe constraint. Ohm supposedly lives in a kind of sanctuary for battered women and claims to have found a way to breed without men – and that she is writing her missives while under siege from the “FBI, DEA, ATF and all manner of sect-obsessed acronyms”.

The third strand is a hectoring Greek chorus, presented by – bear with me – a genome. That’s to say, A, C, T and G: the four letters in the sequence of DNA. This voice is also called the “Creatrix” and its general role is to explain the mysteries of genetics and the hubris of mankind for thinking it can map out such complexities, even though, as the voice reminds us: “You, you don’t even know you’ve been born. How or why.”

More here.