Customer Reviews

Before You Sleep

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Before You Sleep is a story about a family whose dysfunctional stories begin in the 1930s with the narrator's grandfather. The stories about her sister and her cheating husband, her mother's eccentric personality, her father's reluctant existance, and the narrator, Karin, a seductress that gets the man that she wants at all cost.

The story is mainly focused on infedility--we are shown just how incredibly weak some men are and doesn't take them long to become unfaithful. Karin seduced several married men, and then she noticed how the guilt from the men turned them into especially sweet and attentive husbands later on. It is very real and emotional and even a bit quirky at times--this is a great story about a family that is less than perfect, but still you can somehow feel the love and the ties that bond.

I gave this book a shot, but by the end I was too confused and tired to care what happened to the characters. The deception, rambling, and exaggeration proved to be too much for my little mind to take. In some ways I guess it was stimulating (since I spent so much time struggling over whether I should believe the narrator), but not in a way that I found particularly enjoyable.

From the daughter of film director Ingmar Bergman, who showcased emotionally fractured personalities, and actress Liv Ullmann one might anticipate a rather Bergmanesque first novel. Before You Sleep is that with spare scenes, bleak humor, and dysfunctional family relationships. However, there is more, much more - the pages resonate with a uniquely original contemporary voice.

Were Linn Ullmann not the offspring of two such gifted parents odds are that her debut would still be an international bestseller for she may have learned, she may have inherited, but she has synthesized her legacy into a thought provoking vision that is solely her own .Blessed with rich imagination and discerning eye she has fashioned an intriguing fictional memoir. With the sometimes dark but always perceptive ruminations of a young woman as its matrix Before You Sleep is rich with incandescent prose and revelatory observations.

Ms. Ullmann's choice of prefatory quotations is apt for this tale that reveals the duplicity of the human heart, the machinations of the mind. The first quote is from German poet Rilke who, in this particular verse, utters a wish to be alone and awake in the dark. The second is from heavyweight Joe Frazier: "I don't want to knock my opponent out. I want to hit him, step away, and watch him hurt. I want his heart."

Translated from the Norwegian by award-winning translator Tiina Ninnally who brought us "Smilla's Sense of Snow," Before You Sleep is the story of an Oslo family, the Blom's, as seen through the reflections of their youngest daughter, Karin. She introduces them by saying, "Anni drank to forget. I drank to be happy. Father drank just to keep going. Grandma drank to sleep better at night. Aunt Selma drank to be even meaner than she already was."

Her mother, the irresistibly attractive Anni, "Oslo's best hairdresser......who didn't really want to be Anni at all, but somebody else entirely" and her father, a man known only as "Father" are separated. Older sister, beautiful Julie, married Aleksander in the summer of 1990. It is a doomed match for Julie as she becomes convinced of her husband's faithlessness.

Karin recalls that some of her happiest times as a child were spent going to the movies with her father. It was during these moments that he may have molded her with such instructive dictums as "A human heart isn't any bigger than this, said Father, taking his hand out of his pocket and showing me his clenched right fist. The knuckles were white. You shouldn't ask for too much..."

As she reflects, Karin's thoughts travel from Oslo today to Brooklyn in the 1930's where Anni lived as a child, the daughter of a successful costume maker. Karin also recalls her own sexual adventures, the seduction of a man to whom she was not particularly attracted. Lying, she has concluded is of import. The trick is to know how to do it, to learn which lies will be believed and which will not.

Before You Sleep closes as it began - Karin is caring for Sander, Julie's young son. "I bend over him, put my ear to his lips. Only then do I hear that everything is the way it's supposed to be. Everything is fine. Sander is breathing. He's asleep now. He sleeps the whole night. Here, next to me."

Now a journalist in Oslo, Ms. Ullmann's future is bright if predicated only on the inventiveness and luminosity of her first novel.

This book took me several pages to get involved, but the story kept pulling me along to discover what was going to happen next. A typical dysfunctional family, most people will be able to relate to this wacky group. Through a sort of stream of consciousness writing style, Ullmann does a beautiful job describing a variety of intricate, intimate family scenes, from a wedding to their drinking habits. This is a good absorbing book.

I can't say that I've ever seen an Ingmar Bergman film, but I've often heard them described as cold and sterile, bleak and despairing. If those words truly describe Bergman's style, then we can safely say that his daughter successfully captured on page what her parents captured before her on film.

Our narrator, Karin, tells her family's story in a bluntly honest way. Hardships are neither embellished nor glossed over; they are what they are. Ullman's prose is spare and almost harsh, like the landscape of her heritage. You don't feel as though you're entering her world as you read, it's more as though it's being shown to you from a distance. This makes for a very absorbing read, though not necessarily an enjoyable one. The story told in BEFORE YOU SLEEP story is not happy, nor terribly plot driven, but if you're looking more for atmosphere than story, you won't go wrong reading it.

Ulllmann is a good writer with an eye for strange, resonant images. And her narrator Karin is fascinating...an unusual and unforgettable character. I found the book, on the whole, to be an engrossing story. But I couldn't give it 5 stars because there are some moments where it wanders off and falls a little flat...almost as if the book just couldn't sustain its precocity throughout. Still, it's a worthwhile read, very impressive for a debut. I look forward to more from Ullmann.

Before You Sleep has an alluring--and certainly unreliable--narrator, Karin, who can't seem to relate to herself, her family, or the men around her without lapsing into (at times) fantastic lies. It makes for an interesting story, to say the least. Originally written in Norwegian, the story doesn't suffer from the translation (at least, not as far as I can tell, since I'm not proficient in Norwegian!)--it's still a graceful yet abrupt narrative, like Karin herself. My only quibble is that Karin doesn't seem to change much over the course of the novel; she's rather static. I was left wondering whether any of the novel's events would change her in any way. Still, Ullmann has such a distinct voice, and Karin is such a great character, that this book is well worth a read.

"Before You Sleep" is a wonderful look inside the doors and windows of a very dysfunctional family. The trials and tribulations of Karin and the world she lives in add the wonderful backdrop to a sometimes complicated and extremely character focused book. It takes some work getting into it....but, if you give it time, you'll make it. It's a bit slow going, but if you're a fan of charcter books, this one might be for you.

I would encourage anyone who is interested in Scandinavia - to grab this book as soon as possible. It's a nice complement to the serious literature from this region. Snip: (...)

Ullmann's,'Before You Sleep' updates middleclass, staus quo mores, cruising and crashing through the late twentieth century. The author, daughter of superb actress Liv and the director of her most famous films, Ingmar Bergman, guaranteed my curiosity. Plus having paternal grandparents from Trondheim, the setting of the story. Was it repaid? Her dry and often cruel humour lifts this tale of white collar dysfunction from tedium. Her surreal sexual fantasies are clever rather than convincing. Early on, the narrator declares that's she's learnt the value of deceit, thus inviting our complicity...trust me, I lie, so to speak.It works, but is a bit thin on description: the kind of feral, long weekend that a feminine Charles Bukowski(heaven forbid!) might revel in. But that's a different climate and culture. I hankered for more evocation of place to deliver me to Trondhein or Oslo.