SOURCE: Review of Dream of the Wolf, by Scott Bradfield. Kirkus Reviews 58, no. 18 (15 September 1990): 1268-269.

In the following review, the critic discusses the themes of fantasy and the unconscious mind in the stories of Dream of the Wolf.

Bradfield follows up his strange and brilliant first novel (The History of Luminous Motion, 1989) with a glittering if uneven collection of 13 short stories [In Dream of the Wolf]—each centered upon a downtrodden loner who retreats into a primordial world of the mind.

In the title piece, a man forsakes his bland everyday life for the wild tundra of his dreams. He dreams of wolves, and in each dream the wolf overtakes the man (“When I dream of the wolf, I am the wolf. I've been wolves in New York, Montana and Beirut. It's as if time and space, dream and reality have just opened up, joined me with everything...