A young girl befriends a talking goose while trying to survive a war and occupation.

Sophia's world is turned upside down when her mother, who is known as the most intelligent woman of her country, sends her away to keep her safe from the unavoidable bombing of their home, The Capital. This leads Sophia down a winding, fever dream of a path through the country while navigating a world without her mother. She soon meets a new companion, a talking Goose, and they band together to make it through the war and find the coveted Black Market. On the way, she meets many characters, both trustworthy and untrustworthy, that keep her on her toes and force her to learn how to make her own decisions - something she thought she would never be able to do in her mother's shadow.

This story is whimsical, dark, and very timely with its deeper message on womanhood and what it means to live amidst a war. I got lost in this book and loved what I got out of it. Heather O'Neill knows how to weave real world problems with imagination and fantasy, and I don't think I'll ever get enough.

I will be recommending!

The Capital of Dreams is a dystopian, war-torn fairytale told from the perspective of a fourteen year old girl whose country is invaded during war. Sofia Bottom has lived a life of luxury in the Capital with her mother Clara, a renowned writer and well regarded thinker. When the enemy invades their tiny country of Elysia, Clara tasks Sofia with smuggling her new manuscript to safety via a train evacuating children. Everything is going according to plan, until the train catches the attention of the enemy and Sofia is forced to flee, losing Clara’s manuscript in the process. Thus begins Sofia’s long, harrowing adventure as she faces soldiers, survivors, and talking geese to regain her mother’s work.

This book is very different from anything I’ve ever read. It was a fascinating choice to tell the story through the eyes of Sofia, a young woman on the cusp of adolescence. Puberty is a volatile time for young people and as Sofia straddles youth and adulthood her internal upheaval mirrors the volatility of the ravaged country that surrounds her. There are sickening descriptions of the travesties that occur during wartime, but through Sofia’s lens they seem trivial, almost cumbersome to what she views as important (i.e. pleasing her mother). Sofia’s naivety is what makes the fairytale aspects of this novel shine. She is able to make sense of violence through folklore; wandering around with a talking goose, searching for fantastical Black Markets, or sheltering with eccentric rebels. They’re devises that allow her to understand the horrors she encounters. Throughout the tale, Sofia’s maturation unveils slowly before readers’ eyes as she is forced to cease luxuriating in the past, learning how to survive instead.

The relationship between Sofia and her mother Clara was probably my favorite aspect of the book. Sofia and Clara are the embodiments of girlhood and womanhood respectively. Clara is passionate, lackadaisical, bold, selfish, and haughty. She is a ball of contradictions, representing the complexities of womanhood. She coddles Sofia while simultaneously treating her as a mini peer, making for an interesting examination of mother/child codependency. The messages behind Clara’s enthusiasm for the arts also felt very topical, especially as we face acts of repression against creation in our own lives. Art is the antithesis of occupation and creation must persist during wartime. I found this to be the most important theme of the novel, both a reflection and a warning.

I enjoyed my time reading The Capital of Dreams and even though there were some slower sequences, I felt like I could spend weeks analyzing the text. I never thought I’d feel so strongly about a talking goose, but this story made me believe in the safety of imagination and the power that we wield within our own minds.

Thank you Harper Perennial for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

As a massive fan of Heather O'Neill’s previous novels, I was eager to dive into The Capital of Dreams, but unfortunately, it didn’t capture my attention in the way I had hoped. O'Neill usually has this wonderful balance of whimsy and perverseness that makes her writing so captivating, but in this novel, that magic seemed to be missing. The story felt flat, and I struggled to connect with the characters, who lacked the depth and intrigue that made her earlier works so memorable. While there are still glimpses of her trademark style, the book just never quite took off for me. It’s disappointing, but I’m hopeful her next one will be more in line with the brilliance I’ve come to expect from her.

Heather O’Neill has blown me away with her writing. The way this book seamlessly integrates folklore and magical realism into an exploration of mother-daughter relationships, girlhood, and war is astounding. Her prose sings. Her descriptions are vivid and one-of-a-kind, leading to a cinematic reading experience that was ethereal and all-consuming. I felt as if I was with Sofia in that forest, traveling with the Goose, desperate to get to the Black Market, to make her mother proud, to survive. It’s a bleak fairy tale, but one that’s told with wit and whimsy and humor. I loved it.

Thank you to Harper Perennial and NetGalley for the ARC!

I have been a huge fan of Heather O’Neill’s previous work, but this is…not really up to her usual standards.

There are some things about this that are wildly good (the writing, the world building), but thematically it’s pretty confused and I really did not love the senseless animal violence toward the end that made the entire adventure of the book feel kind of meaningless.

I love the way the author constructed this world, and the book is a really interesting meditation on the meaning of art amid tragedy and violence, but whatever cohesive purpose this was all supposed to have never really comes through.

It’s not set in the real world but it is real world adjacent, which leaves the reader speculating as to what exactly this is supposed to parallel. Is this supposed to be a take on the French Revolution? Is it a speculative cautionary tale about what might happen to the United States in the future? Or is it all just a fever dream with no ties to real world events? That’s unclear, and a problem.

The writing is beautiful and thoughtful, and for that reason this is probably worth reading. But in terms of plot and story detail, it needed better focus and less hopeless aimlessness.

I think my expectations were not set quite right for this book, and had they been more on target I don't think I would have picked it up. The Capital of Dreams is a fable-like tale of how young Sofia deals with the war and subsequent occupation of her home country, Elysia. Sofia's mother is a famous philosopher who seems to only come to care for her daughter once it's too late and Sofia must be sent away "for her safety." Ultimately this decision results in Sofia wandering the ravished countryside alone to avoid capture and death at the hands of the Enemy, a vaguely Russian, possibly German WWII inspired foe. Along the way, Sofia picks up a talking goose and has several fantastic brushes with creatures from local myth. Sofia's travels and reminiscences are tragic at best and outright traumatic at worst, and the entire story is terribly bleak. I did not care for this tale and its heavily pedantic take on womanhood and the inherent trauma of being female. Although the writing style was evocative, dreamlike and uncanny, with sudden switches from current to past events, I could not say I liked reading this. I think this tale has an audience out there for its introspective look at class, privilege, and womanhood, but I was not it.

Elysia, a small, forgotten country ruled by the arts and humanities, is under attack from its greatest enemy. As an outspoken woman of the arts, Sofia's mother has a target on her back. She decides that in order to save her country she must write a manifesto and send it out of the country with Sofia. Then other countries will know what is happening and that it is happening to real people. However, the train carrying the children out of the city makes an unexpected stop and Sofia loses her mother's prized manuscript, leading her to take off in search of the Black Market.

I loved this book! It was whimsical and had lots of important messaging about growing from a girl to a woman, as well as what happens when we fear otherness and become at war against it.

Publishing day review! The Capital of Dreams by Heather O’Neill🪿

An imaginative and whimsical but fairly dark fairy tale/fever dream of a novel that follows Sofia—a fourteen-year-old from the small European city of Elysia—who is forced to flee the Capital when the Enemy invades. Her mother, who is a well-known feminist writer and speaker, gives Sofia a mission: carry the manuscript of her memoir to safety. Her mother is convinced that this memoir will convince others that the people of Elysia are enlightened, intelligent artists who are worth saving. Sofia loses her mother’s manuscript almost immediately, however, and begins a fantastical journey to find the Black Market, where she’s convinced she’ll find the manuscript again. Meanwhile, the Enemy is arresting and killing dissidents, burning and banning books, and closing schools.

I would categorize this book as magical realism (a genre I love; The Night Circus is one of my favorite books of all time!). This book is grounded in reality but with some magical elements; for example, one of the main characters is a talking—highly intellectual—goose. The Goose is my favorite character that I’ve encountered in some time!

I think what I loved most about this novel was the way it examined the ordinary complexities and dangers of being girls and women even in the extraordinariness of wartime. The question of whether you are pretty enough or smart enough or special enough. The ways men silence women. The struggle to be taken seriously. The demand for girls to be “good.” The intricacies of mother-daughter relationships.

This book also reminded me a bit of Station Eleven, in that it focused on the importance of art even in the darkest of times.

Thank you to @harperperennial and @netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Book Review The Capital of Dreams by Heather O’Neill

A coming of age story with a feminist fairy tale quality that grapples with what it means to be a woman, motherhood, as well as survival and humanity during war. As always I am blown away with the brilliance of O’Neill’s writing in capturing hard hitting moral issues in insightful, creative and humorous ways. The backdrop of war was used to depict how universal it is to fear difference. What is not known or understood is to be feared, despised and rejected. There is no right, there is only wrong. The symbolism and metaphors were so cleverly built into the story.

Sofia must figure out who she can trust and what is she willing to do to survive. This journey both metaphorically and literally is the heart of the story. As only O’Neill can do this internal struggle is portrayed through Sofia and her relationship with her talking goose. But also in the complicated relationship with her mother.

“What kind of survival was she choosing? Living right now required a certain ugliness.”

“You seem more frightened of the idea of her being alive than dead.”

This book captivated me and made pause and think! It’s a great bookclub book because there is so much to discuss.

I can't really describe why or how, but I really came to enjoy this book.

It was weird and beautiful and imaginative and depressing all wrapped into one. It is about war and family and growing up and place and language and more. At first I didn't like the narrative voice but Sophia, and her relationship with her mother, grew on me. The goose is a genius character; so odd and yet compelling.

Still thinking about what it all meant...

Heather O'Neill writes the perspective of a 14-year-old girl like she's still living in that weird phase.

This is a magical and mystical story and no one could have written something this beautiful.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

When the tiny country of Elysia is invaded by its neighboring country (known solely as the Enemy), the famous artist and writer Clara Bottom puts her fourteen-year-old daughter Sophia on a train heading out of the country, along with her last manuscript, which is hidden in a book of fairytales. When the train is intercepted by a force of the Enemy’s troops, Sophia escapes into the forest, only to discover that her mother’s manuscript has gone missing. Though she and her mother have had their differences, Sophia vows that she will do whatever it takes to find the manuscript and so she and a talking goose embark on a journey through the woods where creatures out of myth haunt the trees. But the monsters Sophia spies out of the corner of her eyes aren’t nearly as dangerous as the people she encounters.

Though Heather O’Neill is a respected literary figure with books like The Lonely Hearts Hotel and Lullabies for Little Criminals, I hadn’t read any of her books before I picked up The Capital of Dreams so I didn’t know what to expect.

Honestly, I’m still unsure of what to expect from O’Neill’s writing. Is The Capital of Dreams typical of her work, or is it an outlier?

See, the story is written with fairytales in mind. Sophia grew up on fairy stories and is reluctant to let them go- understandable, as such tales provide plenty of consolation in hard times. What threw me off was O’Neill’s prose: though Sophia is fourteen and reaching toward adulthood, the book is written as though it is meant for a younger audience (for nine to twelve, perhaps) when it is definitely an adult story. It makes for a very disjointed reading experience when, on one page, Sophia is chatting away with the Goose about childish things, and then a few pages later, Sophia has a series of very frank thoughts about sex and sexuality. Still other times, Sophia comes face to face with death and descriptions of horrendous violence, but the prose sets all of this violence at a distance- until it doesn’t. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to it.

And yet it all feels like O’Neill did it all on purpose. Sophia’s only defense mechanism to stay sane amidst the extreme violence she witnesses is to escape into a world of fairytales. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why O’Neill’s prose is written the way that it is, with children’s stories in mind.

For all that, I can’t say that I liked this book or found it compelling. Part of it had to do with the prose, which I quickly found irritating every time I picked it up again, and part of it had to do with the flashbacks. Nearly every other chapter flits away from Sophia’s journey through the forest and back in time to Sophia’s life with her mother before and during the war. Do those chapters help the reader understand Sophia’s choices by the end of the book? Yes. Did I find them completely aggravating? Also yes. I’m not a fan of flashbacks in general, though, so your mileage will vary based on whether or not you find them as annoying as I do.

Overall, I can’t say The Capital of Dreams is a bad book. It’s not. O’Neill clearly knows what she is doing with her work, but it is not a book that I liked or enjoyed though I can understand why others would.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the free ebook in exchange for an honest review. Receipt of the ebook did not affect my opinions.

This was such a cool little book! Whimsical dark fairy tale-esque. I'd say 3.5 stars, but I'd definitely be interested in checking out this author's other work! Longer rtc on my goodreads!

Sofia is fourteen and charged with smuggling a manuscript to safety during war. She loses the prized manuscript, and is alone and needs to find her way.

This was certainly a very unique story that is a mashup of a few genres. It’s coming of age story in a time of war and trauma but reads like a dark fairy tale. There are so many great quotes and passages that make you think. While the entire story is set over war and turmoil, there is still some humor in the form of a talking goose. Lots of sad moments, but a worthwhile ending.

“What was more important? The lives of all the citizens of the Capital. Or one girl feeling loved?”

The Capital of Dreams comes out 1/7.

This book is well written, but unfortunately, I could not get into the overall story. I didn't realize this book was a folklore retelling of sorts. I thought it would be more literary fiction since I've read from this author before. I enjoyed the characters; they were very vibrant and full of personality. The story has this dream-like quality to it, but overall, I just felt confused by all the magical realism. If you like that particular genre, then you will love this.

The Capital of Dreams was my first introduction to O’Neill’s work, and I find myself quite impressed. The novel follows fourteen-year-old Sofia at the start of a war, navigating both her adolescence and the challenges of civil unrest.

Sofia’s story is told as a dark fairytale – equal parts realistic and magical, the trials she faces are specific and yet still vague enough to happy at any time in history, past or present. O’Neill has created complex characters in Sofia, her mother Clara, and her companion the Goose, a bird that can talk through both talent and belief. O’Neill’s writing is whimsical and grim, and manages to accurately capture discussions of mother-daughter relationships, the importance of art, a young girl’s personal beliefs, and the havoc war can wreak on the country and the individual.

The writing style absolutely killed me with this one. I know it is meant to be from the perspective of a young child, but there is only so much boring sentence structure and use of passive voice that a person can take. This was disappointing, because it had all the other elements that I usually love: use of magical realism, complex metaphors, vaguely WWI related geopolitical landscape . I think I was going into this expecting something more similar to Cathrynne M. Valente's "Dealthess", and ended up with Deathless: the kidz-bop version. I found the message got lost in the author's mission for reading atmosphere, and not even one that landed particularly well.

tbh the most fairytale like thing about this novel is that there’s a talking goose but other than that, it really is just about a 14 year old girl (sophia) trying to survive in a world where people are constantly out to get her. there’s something about the way the author writes that makes the atmosphere feel so soft and dream-like even though sophia is going through this procession of traumatic events. i absolutely love the author’s writing style.

the most interesting part of the book was her relationship with her mother, as she continually goes back and forth between feeling love and contempt for her. this dissonance honestly is what makes the plot twist so jarring, and i feel like this quote very well sums up not only the war going on around sophia but the one going on in her mind as well

“once there was a girl about her age who wore a sparkling leotard and rode her bicycle across a high wire. they had to travel to faraway places to find poor people who had been neglected in this particular manner. no mother had worried about this child dying. sometimes neglect can help you discover your potential.”

i loved the book but was expecting a bit more fairytale/fantasy elements. overall i do think this is an amazing novel with beautiful prose and i will def be recommending this book, tysm to netgalley and the publishers for the arc!

The Capital of Dreams is a unique and captivating read that lingers in the mind long after the final page. The book masterfully blends dark, whimsical tones with a fascinating mix of reality and imagination, creating an immersive world where it’s delightfully unclear whether the narrator’s descriptions are to be trusted. One standout character is the goose—a surprising highlight! The author gives this animal a vivid, strong personality that brings both humor and depth to the story. Starting this book, I didn’t know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised by how it unfolded. The unexpected twist at the end caught me off guard in the best way, adding a satisfying conclusion to an already intriguing journey. For readers who enjoy books with a touch of the fantastical and a dash of the surreal, The Capital of Dreams is sure to leave a lasting impression.

Following a young girl separated from her mother during wartime as she attempts to find safety and retrieve her mother’s lost manuscript. First of all: there’s a talking goose!! And it’s one of my favorite characters I’ve read in a long time. This is a fairytale like story about the necessity of art and complexities of mother/daughter relationships that manages to feel both historical and futuristic. Pretty different from what I usually read and I loved it!