Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Bradfield, Scott - Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 September 1990)

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Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 September 1990)

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...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Judy Cooke (review date 22 September 1988)
   2. Roz Kaveney (review date 14 October 1988)
   3. Robert Sandall (review date 11 December 1988)
   4. Anthony Gardner (review date March 1989)
   5. Mark R. Kelly (review date September 1989)
   6. Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 September 1990)
   7. Sybil Steinberg (review date 28 September 1990)
   8. Donna Seaman (review date 1 November 1990)
   9. Dorothy Golden (review date 1 November 1990)
   10. Carolyn See (review date 19 November 1990)
   11. Michael Upchurch (review date 13 January 1991)
   12. Paul West (review date 24 February 1991)
   13. Elizabeth Young (review date 29 January 1993)
   14. Robert Irwin (review date 12 February 1993)
   15. Kathy O'Shaughnessy (review date 6 April 1993)
   16. Eva Salzman (review date 15 May 1993)
   17. Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 February 1996)
   18. Publishers Weekly (review date 19 February 1996)
   19. Donna Seaman (review date 15 March 1996)
   20. Adam Mazmanian (review date 15 March 1996)
   21. Eileen Pollack (review date 30 June 1996)
   22. Scott Bradfield (essay date June 1998)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright