the dream sequence
"With the help of a witchdoctor who always wears blue jeans and a t-shirt,
a nameless narrator tries to recover her memory, which has strangely vanished.
This is the point of departure for a complex structure--narratives within
narratives--that recalls the procedures of the Oulipians and Raymond Roussel.
Scary, mesmerizing, sometimes improbably funny, The Dream Sequence is a
masterful performance."
JOHN ASHBERY
"If you find it hard to imagine a story with echoes of Samuel Beckett and Jim
Thompson in equal measure, then you haven't read this terse, spookily
compelling tale of a woman with no past, only a paranoid present in which
things are neither what they seem--nor otherwise."
BARRY GRAHAM "In The Dream Sequence, Kate Hunter explores memory from a fresh eye,
tossing Franz Kafka and David Markson into the spin cycle to create a
vision entirely her own. This compelling debut takes us inside the mind
of a woman who has lost most of hers as she seeks to discover her life,
and what that means when you have no memory. As written in Hunter's
sharp new voice, you will want to join her on this finely-crafted,
mysterious voyage of discovery."
ELIZABETH CRANE "Our narrator wakes up lacking all memory. She is a blank slate; the victim of a curse. A stranger tells her that in order to regain her memory, she must 1) find out who put the curse on her, 2) find out why, and 3) return the curse to that person. Such a simple premise serves as the backdrop against which Kate Hunter’s The Dream Sequence, explores deep issues of dream states and the validity of being, and at its most poignant, asks simply “what are dreams?” CALEB J ROSS
OUTSIDER WRITERS "Hunter has crafted a bizarre tale that gains particular force when her
protagonist attempts to reconstruct her memory from what she sees in her dreams--as unreliable
a guide as could be imagined. . . . [Hunter has] crafted a tight quandary.
Amnesia, bereft of any sense of who is good or bad or right or wrong, has created a moral
vacuum in the life of the protagonist, one that's impossible for her to fill."
TIME OUT MAGAZINE "The Dream Sequence follows a woman with no memory as she fights to regain her
past through her dreams with the help of a witch doctor. Hunter deftly portrays
the woman's struggles, both against her cursed amnesia and the bad memories she
is sure to uncover."
LARGEHEARTED BOY "Hunter works extraordinarily well within abstract restraints, writing in a severely
loose writing style. Sentences are formed by a series of short phrases with scant punctuation
that ramble from one nervous idea to the next. Highly effective. . . . On top of that, Hunter gives
her protagonist some pretty interesting revelations about what her loss of memory
means, such as attempting to regain your memory is much like living your life in
reverse. In additon, not having your memory can give you a clean slate; if you
can't remember having done anything to anyone, have those things actually happened?"
RETROLOWFI
"Hunter . . . explores the nature and limitations of memory while playing with the narrative form,
her protagonist forced to navigate a world that doesn't quite make sense. The effect is something
like Memento meets Alice in Wonderland. . . . Hunter has a talent for description. And she has
interesting things to say about the nature of memory. Toward the book's end her protagonist dreams
of a man Borges might have concocted, whose memory runs in the wrong direction: he 'remembers' the
future, but once his memories are lived they are lost to him." DEBRA HAMEL VOID MAGAZINE
