Hunts in Dreams
by Tom Drury
Houghton Mifflin

In Tom Drury's third novel, "Hunts in Dreams," each member of the Darling family spends a weekend reaching for meaning that seems just beyond their grasp. It could be called an existential novel, with each member of the family looking ponderously up into the sky at various times and feeling tiny in the face of such immensity.

Charles Darling, the father and husband, spends much of the weekend in a fanatical effort to acquire an antique gun once owned by his dead stepfather. His wife, Joan Gower, is absent at a business conference for most of the weekend, while she searches for a past she can't possibly recapture after so many years. Lyris, who has returned home after 16 years as an orphan, feels like a stranger in a family that is biologically her own, but foreign nonetheless. Out for a late night walk, she nearly entangles herself in a dangerous situation with the town arsonist. And Micah, an endearing seven-year-old boy, prowls the town one night surprising himself with his adult thoughts and wielding his secret six-shooter pistol.

The pivotal moments in the novel all occur during the night. The title suggests that what seems so real during sleep disintegrates into nothing but a reminder in real life, leaving us yearning for the kind of self-awareness we can only know in our dreams.

"Hunts in Dreams" does not contain a readily identifiable plot, except for the abstract idea of the characters' search for meaning. Like "The Waves" by Virginia Woolf, "Hunts in Dreams" is almost entirely driven by the characters, not the plot. And also like "The Waves," the characters in Drury's novel constantly try to ground themselves in a world that is largely indifferent to the plight of individuals.

Fear not, however. Drury does not emulate Woolf's impenetrable stream-of-consciousness. His style is deceptively simple, sometimes masking layers of symbolism. He masterfully develops character through dialogue. In one scene, a short exchange is all it takes to convey the distance between Charles and his wife.

Drury is best, and funniest, in the details. Lyris's former foster father makes it easy for police to discover his involvement with bombs after naming his dog after an explosive. " 'Here, Cordite,' " he would call, with darkness settling over the suburb where they lived. 'Come home, Cordite.' "

Charles frequents a bar where a sign over the pinball machine reads: "If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience."

While Drury has an uncommon ability to infuse the mundane with meaning, sometimes his attempts fall flat. In one glaring example, the author gets philosophical while describing metallic sounds that seem "to underscore the material nature in our lives." In the same scene, he vaguely characterizes someone's eyes as "tired eyes." But these lapses are few, and do nothing to overshadow the strength of the novel as a whole.

Granta chose Drury as one of America's best young novelists in 1996 after the publication of his first novel "The End of Vandalism." With "Hunts in Dreams," Drury makes good on that promise. It should bring him much more acclaim than his last novel, "The Black Brook," and may even put him on the same plane as such other original contemporary writers as Lorrie Moore, Chris Offut and Dorothy Allison.

The reviewer of this book is a former student of the author.

— Ben Welch (bwelch@english.umass.edu)