From the inexhaustible imagination of Ian McEwan--a master of
contemporary fiction and author of the Booker Prize-winning
national bestseller Amsterdam--an enchanting work of fiction
that appeals equally to children and adults.



First published in England as a children's book, The
Daydreamer marks a delightful foray by one of our greatest
novelists into a new fictional domain. In these seven exquisitely
interlinked episodes, the grown-up protagonist Peter Fortune
reveals the secret journeys, metamorphoses, and adventures of his
childhood. Living somewhere between dream and reality, Peter
experiences fantastical transformations: he swaps bodies with the
wise old family cat; exchanges existences with a cranky infant;
encounters a very bad doll who has come to life and is out for
revenge; and rummages through a kitchen drawer filled with useless
objects to discover some not-so-useless cream that actually makes
people vanish. Finally, he wakes up as an eleven-year-old inside a
grown-up body and embarks on the truly fantastic adventure of
falling in love. Moving, dreamlike, and extraordinary, The
Daydreamer marks yet another imaginative departure for Ian
McEwan, and one that adds new breadth to his body of work.

As each chapter of The Daydreamer was completed, I read
it aloud to my children.  The arrangement was
simple.  They got the latest installment of what we
called the 'Peter stories', and I took away some useful editorial
content.  This pleasant, almost ritualistic exchange in
turn affected the writing itself, in that I became more than
usually attentive to the sound of an adult voice speaking each
sentence.  This adult was not, or not simply,
me.  Alone in my study, I read aloud passages to an
imaginary child (not quite, or not only, one of mine) on behalf of
this imaginary adult.  Ear and tongue, I wanted to please
them both.



The child's needs I thought I knew instinctively: a good tale above
all, a sympathetic hero, villains yes, but not all the time because
they are too simplifying, clarity in openings, twists in the
middle, and satisfying outcomes that were not always
happy.  For the adult I felt little more than vague
sympathy.  We all love the idea of bedtime stories
-- the fresh minted breath, the wide and trustful eyes, the hot
water bottle baking down among the clean linen, the sleepy glowing
covenant -- and who would not have the scene carved upon his
headstone?  But do adults really like children's
literature?  I've always thought the entusiasm was a
little overstated, even desperate.  'Swallows and
Amazons? Beatrix Potter? Marvellous
books!'  Do we really mean it, do we really still enjoy
them, or are we speaking up for, and keeping the lines open to, our
lost, nearly forgotten selves?  When exactly did you last
curl up alone with The Swiss Family Robinson?



What we like about children's books is our children's pleasure in
them, and this is less to do with literature and more to do with
love.  Early on in writing and reading aloud The
Daydreamer I began to think it might be better to forget about
our mighty tradition of children's literature and to write a book
for adults about a child in a language that children could
understand.  In the century of Hemingway and Calvino
simple prose need not deter the sophisticated reader.  I
hoped the subject matter -- the imagination itself -- was one in
which anyone who picks up a book has a stake.  Similarly,
transformation has been a theme, almost an obsession, in all
literatures.  The Daydreamer was published in an
illustrated edition for children in Britain and the United States,
and in a more sober adult form in various other
countries.  There was once a tradition by which authors
dedicate their books to the fates, rather in the manner of a parent
sending a child out into the world. 'Goe littel
booke...'  this one may well settle down after all for a
quiet life in a corner of a children's library, or die in oblivion,
but for the moment I'm still hoping it might give some pleasure all
round.



Ian McEwan

1995