Tell Me Your Dreams written by Sidney Sheldon is an exciting, engaging and interesting novel based on the concept of Multiple Personality Disorder or Split Personality. Ashley Patterson is the main character of the novel and the whole mystery revolves around her and three more characters, her co-workers Toni Prescott, and Alette Peters and Ashley’s father. This is such an attention-grabbing novel that you won’t close it until you finish it as every chapter has a hidden suspense and you want to read more and more of it. Once finished my reaction was – oh really…Is this what was happening since the beginning of the novel. The starting chapters are bit confusing but once you are through these then everything is in its place and you started enjoying reading it.
At the onset of the novel, three women are introduced and shown how different they are from each other. Ashley is a very beautiful woman who works in a Silicon Valley for a computer company. Toni is a British woman and very bold, harsh and full of rage that she can kill someone. Whereas Alette is very calm, dreamy and romantic. She is from Rome. It is shown that Ashley, Toni and Alette have very different personalities but Toni and Alette get along very well whereas Alette is friendly with Ashley but Toni is very harsh to her. Also in the early stage of the novel, few murders are committed in a similar fashion suspecting one person after all these.
Ashley is an introvert workaholic person who feels very lonely and later in the novel it is exposed that why is she like this. Ashley’s father is a famous heart surgeon. Though she likes him but not so keen to remain in his company and generally avoids him. Toni has a great fondness for song but gone through a much stressed relationship with her mother. Alette on the other hand is a great artist and God gifted but lacks self-confidence. Towards conclusion it is revealed that Toni and Alette are not the real individuals but in fact the alters or split personalities of Ashley. She had developed Dissociative Identity Disorder as she was sexually abused by her father when she was a teenager. How both the alters are structured and why these are actually formed is very interesting. Toni represents her anger towards what has happened to her. When encountered with similar situations over and over again she becomes murderous. Whereas, Alette reveals Ashley’s feelings of pain and humiliation. She provides her much needed motherly love. If you really like suspense then this is the novel for you. You will like it even if you are not a regular reader of books.
About the Writer: Sydney Sheldon is an American writer who is famous for writing best-selling novels. His forte includes writing novels on the plot related to crime fiction and suspense. Few of his best novels are The Naked Face, Rage of Angels, Master of the Game and If Tomorrow Comes. He is the seventh best selling writers of all the time who has written 21 books with an estimated sale of 370 million.
