In Your Dreams - Softcover

Ross, Charlie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593045432 ISBN 13: 9780593045435

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2000

Synopsis

In Your Dreams

About this title

From the Author:

Author¿s note to readers:
‘In Your Dreams’ is what Johnny Riley, the central character, would say to you if you asked him whether he was the marrying type (although he’d probably add a few expletives). Then he’d go down the pub for a game of pool with his mates.

The story revolves around Johnny’s struggle to grow up and tear himself away from pubs, Playstations, Sunday League football, not to mention the film-based fantasies he escapes into when he feels under pressure. In his dreams Johnny is Michael Caine fighting off women like hoards of Zulu’s at Rourke’s Drift. In reality he’s just a normal bloke and his job as a marketing manager for a dodgy video company isn’t exactly the Hollywood fast-track he’d hoped it would be. His one-year-old dog Muttley still uses their flat as a toilet, while his bride-to-be is beginning to realize that Johnny is little more than a beered-up version of Peter Pan. Of course - although Johnny doesn’t always realise it - she is the best thing in his life and he could risk losing her. She’s good-looking, successful and beginning to grow tired of Johnny’s Boy’s Own dream world. Will she hang around and wait, or will she be lured away by one of Johnny’s so-called friends?

IN YOUR DREAMS takes a typical modern lad and pegs him out on a board like a laboratory frog. I created Johnny to allow us all to poke around inside the bizarre, and seldom explored, inner workings of a could-be groom. The comedy of confusion is irresistible - Johnny is just like a gaggle of Dalek’s spinning in circles faced with a stairway. The commitment dilemma is more than just a joke, though, and I introduced characters who would add to Johnny’s confusion as he observes their own relationship dilemmas. I wanted to delve into the emotional depths of male minds and pull out all the demons kicking and screaming, and to portray the reality of male friendships and conversation in a way that many readers will recognize. Lastly, I wanted to show that although he’s in danger of becoming a self-obsessed dreamer, when reality kicks in, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Johnny begins to learn what’s really important in life.

From the Back Cover:

Skirting thirty, Johnny Riley thought he was clear about his priorities in life - keeping his place in the Sunday league team, toilet training his dog Muttley, finishing that film script...oh yeah, and getting hitched to his girlfriend. Where the hell did that last one come from?

Petrified of making a lifelong commitment to one woman, Johnny's caught in the chaos of a countdown to a wedding he's not sure he's ready for. Johnny retreats into his own celluloid dream-world, pulling off an Italian Job-style getaway.

Everyone's keen to offer advice, includng his best man, Merlin, whose own marriage is up the creek; Ratty, who finds the concept of monogamy unfeasible; his barmy Granny Victor, and even the local pub landlord. And then there's Maddy, oldest friend of the bride-to-be, with breasts that could entertain an auditorium.

Then everything begins to go pear-shaped for Johnny: he's suspected of infidelity and failing at work and is surrounded by collapsing relationships. Johnny may be about to throw away the only good thing in his life. So he does what any self-respecting man would do when faced with the conundrum of modern matrimony - buries his head in the sand.

But will Johnny wake up and understand that sometimes reality is better than living In Your Dreams?

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0593045432
• ISBN 13: 9780593045435
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304