The Wide World Dreaming

Lynne Perras teaches communication arts at the University of Calgary.

The heroine of JoAnne Soper-Cook’s first novel, Waking the Messiah, is
a mentally ill woman who thinks she’s Christ. The Wide World Dreaming
is a fictionalized first-person account of the life of Napoleon
Bonaparte. In this novel, which begins with Napoleon’s early childhood
and concludes with his final exile on St. Helena in 1815 (25 years
before his death), the emphasis is not on military strategy or the
perils of war, but rather on the hero’s emotional and sexual life. He
reveals his feelings about his own strength and courage, and about
deaths of his father and Josephine. He chronicles his jealousies, his
love affairs with both men and women, and his incestuous feelings toward
his younger sister.

We see a kinder and gentler Napoleon than the popular image would
suggest. On returning to France in 1792, he writes, “I am appalled by
the rampant squalour that greets me, the degradation that pervades the
streets of Paris like a stench. For the first time in a very long time,
I see ragged and hungry children, clinging to the skirts of women or
cradled in the arms of men with haunted faces.” A chronology of
important events in Napoleon’s life appears at the beginning of this
intimate and lucidly written novel.