By Kaye Gibbons. 171 pp. Algonquin, 1991. 
Kaye Gibbons is a native of North Carolina, best known for her first novel, Ellen Foster, which was made into a film for television. A Cure for Dreams, her third novel, was awarded the 1990/PEN Revson Award, the Heartland Prize for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, and the North Carolina Sir Walter Raleigh Award.
A Cure for Dreams is narrated by Marjorie Polly Randolph, but it is the story of her mother, Betty Davies Randolph, and her grandmother, Lottie O’Cadhain Davies. Marjorie’s voice is confident and confiding, a headlong burst of descriptive language that will appeal to those who are fond of southern culture and novels about women. Gibbons deftly introduces both Marjorie and Betty in the novel’s first page, as Marjorie describes her mother: “To tell the truth, she died in a chair talking, chattering like a string-pull doll. I had spent my life listening to her, sometimes all day, which was often my pleasure during snow and long rains. . .Talking was my mother’s life” (1). As readers, we join Marjorie and become Betty’s audience.
This is a profoundly woman-centered novel. Though some of the characters are men, they are alcoholic, like Betty’s grandfather, or stingy and abusive, like Betty’s father, who mercifully commits suicide and spares his family further interference in their shopping and card playing. Betty’s romantic interests fare little better. The first is criticized for his greasy hair, the second is a drug addict, and the man she marries disappears into World War II, becoming a mere footnote at the end of the novel.
This treatment of men fits both the narrator’s tone, which is often flighty, and Lottie’s attitude toward men (perhaps best described by the novel’s title). Having left the mountains of Kentucky with the hardworking Charles Davies, she expects to be cared for, but Charles expects her to work; they are soon disappointed in each other. As their marriage grows more distant, Lottie observes the relationships around her with a devastating clarity:
Listen and hear what the men call their wives when they come to the store to fetch them. Listen. Old squaw. This sounds bad but it’s truly sweet. Dear and Honey. I wouldn’t trust these. They have an unnatural ring. No name. Just, Come on! This is what your father says, so that should tell you something. . . . Rarely, rarely though will you hear a woman called from the store by her name, which is best. So listen for each time Richard Bethune comes to the door and calls, Amanda! so nicely. And watch how gladly she goes to him. (34-5)
Not all of the lessons Lottie passes on to Betty about men are as clear, however; Betty has no firm idea about how to avoid pregnancy when dating. But Lottie has a great deal to teach Betty about women. She is the center of a supportive community of women who play cards in the back of Porter’s store, bring each other food after births and deaths, and pitch in with baby showers and even furniture for newcomers.
The divide between the men and women is shown most starkly in the story of Sade Duplin, whose husband, Roy, is shot in his own yard. The sheriff is willing to blame a nameless drifter for the death, but Lottie reads the real story in the couple’s history, Roy’s clean dinner plate, and the wild stitches in a quilt Sade is working. The story will be familiar to anyone who has read Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, but Gibbons riffs on the theme like a jazz virtuoso spinning an old favorite tune into a new experience.
Ultimately, that is the pleasure of A Cure for Dreams. Marjorie and Betty and Lottie weave their stories with such fascinating texture and detail that though the themes are familiar, readers will be delighted by their freshness. Though we can’t play a hand of cards in the back of Porter’s store, an afternoon reading this engaging novel is the next best thing.
