Overheard in a Dream - Torey L. Hayden

Torey Hayden is best known for her autobiographical works such as One Child which chart her career as a special needs teacher. Overheard In A Dream is her first fictional book to be published in the UK although it has previously been published under the title The Mechanical Cat in Sweden, Italy, Finland and Japan. James is a recently divorced child psychiatrist living hundreds of miles from his own children. He is intrigued by the case of a nine year old boy he is treating. Conors life is dictated by a bizarre set of rules and rituals; he does not make eye contact and barely communicates with those around him. He is trailed by the wires he must wear in order ...  Read the complete review

Torey Hayden is qualified as an Educational psychologist and special education teacher. She also does charity work with a variety of groups: Childline, NSPCC and the Samaritans to name a few. Overheard in a dream is about Conor, a 9 year old autistic child. Before Conor is taken to a therapist, he seems high functioning and has been away at school. However the school feels they can't do anything for him, but his father is happy about that and doesn't feel he should be sent away. His mother, a famous novelist has a vivid imagination. At the centre of the family is a secret that throws the family into a mystery. Who is the ghost that is haunting Conor and making ...  Read the complete review

Overheard in a Dream is Torey Hayden's first novel after a series of books detailing her career as an educational psychologist and specialist education teacher. Her usual style is autobiographical, but this novel steps away from her experiences and unravels the story of Connor, a boy diagnosed with autism from an early age and who fails to improve in specialist schools. Hayden's style of writing is gripping. She uses the characters to tell the story but it is obvious that to some extent she has incorporated some of her personal experience and knowledge into the text. This novel not only had me wondering how Connor and his family would progress, but also took ...  Read the complete review

I bought this book after spotting in the local supermarket and as a HUGE Torey Hyaden fan I was very surprised not to have heard of it. When I began reading it I was quite shocked at how unlike her other books it was. Firstly Torey Hayden writes about her experiances with some very troubled children whilst working as a special needs teacher and she has wrote some truely amazing books. The first thing I noticed about this book was that it didn't seam to feature Torey herself. It's actually written from a third person point of view about another male working with a troubled child. After re-reading the back cover I also discovered that this is actually ...  Read the complete review

In a lot of ways this is a literary masterpiece. It's about a troubled little boy with symptoms of autism, who is taken by his father to see a child psychologist, against his mother's wishes. The child appears to be haunted by a "ghost", but due to his erratic speech and general behaviour it is near-impossible for the psychologist to get to the root of the problem. So he decides to bring in the child's father, mother and even his sister for family therapy, and the more he hears, the more complicated the problem seems to be. The mother is a successful author, and running alongside the story of the boy is a fantasy tale that the ...  Read the complete review