SOURCE: "Saint Jane," in London Review of Books, Vol. 5, No. 19, October 20-November 2, 1983, pp. 17-18.

In the following excerpt, Jones discusses Jordan's The Dream of a Beast and concludes, "To dismiss this well-tuned story as self-indulgent nonsense would be easy—but very unmusical."

… Another way to offer experience of a derangement of the senses, especially the exultant, ecstatic sort of derangement, is to make use of our shared knowledge of dreams. Telling other people our dreams often bores them. But anyone who has been taken by the writing of Traherne, or Rimbaud, may turn to Neil Jordan's novel, The Dream of a Beast, without fear of tedium. What happens to the narrator is pleasingly tangible and sensuous, stimulating excitement without fear. The dreamer takes it for granted that the world has changed suddenly—the heat, the pavements cracking, strange plants sprouting thick, oily, unrecognisable leaves over plate-glass windows; he...