SUMMARY OF TELL ME YOUR DREAMS

Tell Me Your Dreams is a 1998 novel by the American writer Sidney

Sheldon. The main character of the book is Ashley Patterson, an introverted

workaholic, and her co-workers, Toni Prescott, an outgoing singer and dancer, and

shy artist Alette Peters.

The three women do not get along very well, because of their dissimilar

natures. Toni and Alette generally maintain a friendship, with Alette a calming

influence, but Toni dislikes Ashley and criticizes her harshly. All three women

have issues with their mothers having told them they'd never amount to anything.

Ashley fears that somebody is following her. She's found her house lights

turned on when she comes home from work, her personal effects in disarray, and

someone has written "You will die" on her mirror with a lipstick. She thinks

someone's broken into her house. She requests a police escort, but the next

morning, the police officer assigned to this duty is found dead in her apartment.

Two other murders have already taken place, with an identical pattern. All the

murdered men had been castrated and were having sex before being murdered.

Evidence points to the same woman being involved in all three cases. When a gift

from one of the murdered men to Toni is found in Ashley's things, she is

identified as the killer and arrested. At this point, it is revealed that the three

women are three selves in a multiple personality group.

Universitas Sumatera Utara

second half of the novel deals with the trial, complete with endless squabbling

between opposing psychiatrists as to whether or not MPD is real. Finally when

Ashley's advocate introduces Toni, the violent alter of Ashley, the court is

convinced that Ashley is innocent. Ashley is committed to an insane asylum and

in the course of therapy is introduced to her two "alters" and relives the horrific

events that shattered her mind. She was sexually abused by her father during

childhood and this made her to develop a strong hatred towards men.

There in the asylum, Doctor Gilbert treats her for the MPD. He is attracted

to her and during her crisis he also feels her pain and wants to comfort her. In the

end she gets cured after a long struggle. They leave her out for home. But here is

the suspense. She still harbors her hatred for her father and still Toni resides in her

and she wants to kill her father.

Universitas Sumatera Utara

Sidney Sheldon

Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an Academy

Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during

which he created The Patty Duke Show (1963–66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70)

and Hart to Hart (1979–84), but it was not until after he turned 50 and began

writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of

Midnight (1973) and Rage of Angels (1980) that he became most famous.

Life and career

Sheldon was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois, to parents of

Russian Jewish ancestry, Ascher "Otto" Schechtel (1894–1967), manager of a

jewelry store, and Natalie Marcus. At 10, he made his first sale, $5 for a poem.

During the Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs, and after graduating from

Denver East High School, attended Northwestern University and contributed short

plays to drama groups.

In 1937 he moved to Hollywood, California, where he reviewed scripts

and collaborated on a number of B movies. Sheldon enlisted in the military during

World War II as a pilot in the War Training Service, a branch of the Army Air

Corps, However, his unit was disbanded before Sheldon could see any action. He

then returned to civilian life and moved to New York where he began writing

Universitas Sumatera Utara

MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures. He earned a reputation as a prolific writer;

for example, at one time he had three musicals on Broadway: a rewritten The

Merry Widow, Jackpot, and Dream with Music. His success on Broadway brought

him back to Hollywood where his first assignment was The Bachelor and the

Bobby-Soxer, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay

of 1947.

When television became the new hot medium, he decided to try his hand

in it. "I suppose I needed money," he remembered. "I met Patty Duke one day at

lunch. So I produced The Patty Duke Show, and I did something nobody else in

TV ever did. For seven years, I wrote almost every single episode of the series."

He also wrote for the series Hart to Hart and Nancy. Most famously he wrote the

series I Dream of Jeannie, which he also created and produced, which lasted for

five seasons from 1965–1970. It was "During the last year of I Dream of Jeannie,

I decided to try a novel," he said in 1982. "Each morning from 9 until noon, I had

a secretary at the studio take

all calls. I mean every single call. I wrote each morning - or rather,

dictated - and then I faced the TV business."

In 1969, Sheldon wrote his first novel, The Naked Face, which earned him

a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of

America in the category of Best First Novel. His next novel, The Other Side of

Midnight, went to #1 on The New York Times bestseller list as did several

Universitas Sumatera Utara

miniseries.

His novels often featured determined women who persevere in a tough world run

by hostile men. The novels contained a lot of suspense and devices to keep the

reader turning the page:

"I try to write my books so the reader can't put them down," he explained

in a 1982 interview. "I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of

a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of the old

Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end

of the chapter."

Most of his readers were women. Asked why this was the case he said: "I

like to write about women who are talented and capable, but most important,

retain their femininity. Women have tremendous power - their femininity, because

men can't do without it." Books were Sheldon's favorite medium. "I love writing

books," he commented. "Movies are a collaborative medium, and everyone is

second-guessing you. When you do a novel you're on your own. It's a freedom

that doesn't exist in any other medium."

Sheldon created, produced and wrote I Dream of Jeannie in his co-

production capacity with Screen Gems. He wrote all but two dozen scripts in five

years, sometimes using three pseudonyms {"Mark Rowane", "Allan Devon",

"Christopher Golato"}, while simultaneously writing scripts for "The Patty Duke

Universitas Sumatera Utara

Nancy. Sheldon did this because, as he later admitted, he felt his name was

appearing too often in the credits as creator, producer, copyright owner and writer

of his TV series.

Sheldon was married for 30 years to Jorja Curtright Sheldon, a stage and

film actress who later became an accomplished and well known interior designer.

She died of a heart attack in 1985. He then remarried Alexandra Kostoff, a former

child actress and advertising executive of Macedonian origin, in Las Vegas in

1989. His daughter, Mary Sheldon, became a novelist in her own right.

He struggled with bipolar disorder for years; he contemplated suicide at 17

(talked out of it by his father, who discovered him), as detailed in his

autobiography published in 2005, The Other Side of Me.

Sheldon died on January 30, 2007 from complications arising from

pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California. He was

cremated. His ashes were interred in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Awards

Sheldon won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (1947)

for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony Award (1959) for his musical

Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of

Jeannie, an NBC sitcom.

Universitas Sumatera Utara

Novels

• The Naked Face (1970)

• The Other Side of Midnight (1973)

• A Stranger in the Mirror (1976)

• Bloodline (1977)

• Rage of Angels (1980)

• Master of the Game (1982)

• If Tomorrow Comes (1985)

• Windmills of the Gods (1987)

• The Sands of Time (1988)

• Memories of Midnight (1990)

• The Doomsday Conspiracy (1991)

• The Stars Shine Down (1992)

• Nothing Lasts Forever (1994)

• Morning, Noon and Night (1995)

• The Best Laid Plans (1997)

• Tell Me Your Dreams (1998)

• The Sky Is Falling (2001)

• Are You Afraid of the Dark? (2004)

Autobiography

• The Other Side of Me (2005)

Universitas Sumatera Utara

• The Merry Widow

• Alice in Arms

• Redhead

• Roman Candle

• Gomes(London)

Films

• The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

• Three Guys Named Mike

• Annie Get Your Gun

• Dream Wife

• You're Never Too Young

• Anything Goes

• Billy Rose's Jumbo

• Bloodline

Television

• I Dream of Jeannie

• If Tomorrow Comes

• The Patty Duke Show

• Hart to Hart

Universitas Sumatera Utara