Sleepwalking

by Julie Myerson

Book Overview

Trapped in a bad marriage, Susan learns that she's pregnant just as she begins to contemplate leaving her husband. Then she learns that her father has committed suicide. Into the midst of this... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099494159
• ISBN13: 9780099494157
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Stylish and Chilling

Sleepwalking is an unforgettable and tension filled book. It drew me in and held my interest completely from the first page to the last. The plot is relatively simple, but it is the actions of the characters and the fascinating revelations of their pasts that really holds the reader. I found Susan to be a very likeable character. She is mixed up, damaged by her childhood and in a marriage with a man who she feels less and less connected to as the years go by. On top of this is the fact that she is pregnant and feels as though her body is being taken over. The novel is beautifully written and the simple economy of language stunned me in places because it was so emotive. The affair between Susan and Lenny was very believable and the closeness they felt together was transmitted perfectly onto the page. The Publishers Weekly review above really does the book an injustice. Yes, Susan has an affair while she is pregnant but she does not do it callously - she is afraid and almost near breakdown. I would not describe her husband as either particularly decent or likeable, although he does stand by Susan. To me he came across as one of those stern, `put every problem a woman has down to hormones' type of man who wasn't interested in listening to Susan or talking about her problems. He didn't even want to discuss her art, which was her passion. The flashbacks to Susan's father's early life were wonderful and the character of Queenie was scary without being over the top. The problems that Susan encounters with her own sisters and mother over an inheritance are very realistic and show how you can be related to someone and still have no clue as to why they are behaving in a particular way. The only drawback of this book is that it seemed quite short, which would have been fine but the ending was a bit sudden and not as satisfying as I'd hoped. But that, I suppose, is what life is often like. JoAnne

A SPLENDID DEBUT

This too brief (only 207 pages) novel of a conflicted family and the protagonist's eventual recovery was a splendid debut by Julie Myerson. It is part autobiographical (she says that much of what is true of this fictional father was also true of her own). And, it is a spare yet broadly drawn chronicle of the way misery is inherited by succeeding generations. Our heroine, Susan, survived an unrelentingly painful childhood, but the experience left her "sleepwalking" through life, unable to feel either pain or pleasure. Following her father's suicide, she begins to see ghosts, the phantoms are young boys. It is her dead father returning as the unloved, unwanted boy he once was. Flashbacks to scenes of her father as an emotionally crippled child help Susan come to terms with his treatment of her, and the depth of feeling for a man she has come to love awakens her to life. Considering the autobiographical aspects of her story, Myerson writes objectively with an amazing lack of bitterness. Her powers of observation are keen; her candor is admirable; and she tells a story well.