Customer Reviews

Madeleine Is Sleeping

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is irresistable. The prose poem-like chapters thread through a carnival of characters and settings, leading you from one strange and beautiful world to another. The language is stunning; the story is part fairy tale, part historical fiction, part surreal tableau.

As a book seller, I see hundreds of new novels every year, many of which are well-written, innovative, and lovely, but this is one of those rare gems--a story so perfect in its peculiarity, so delightful in its turns--that you feel you have been given a gift of something you didn't even know you wanted until it was there in your hands.

In this strange and often beautiful novel in which reality and fantasy overlap, Madeleine, a young girl, reclines romantically in what appears to be a permanent state of sleep, with her family and neighbors all tiptoeing around her. Her mind, however, is active, creating a bizarre dream world in which she lives out a series of adolescent fantasies, exploring who she is, what kind of adult will she become, what her role in life may be, what makes her unique, and how her sexual fantasies might be fulfilled.

Unique characters appear in her dreams--an immensely fat woman (Mathilde, Madame Cochon) who has two pairs of wings, a girl who has a stringed body which she can play like a viol, a man who creates the sounds of the nightingale and the cuckoo with his flatulence, a "half-wit" who exposes himself to children, an opera singer dethroned by a castrato, and a photographer in a mental institution, along with Madeleine's real-life family. The "action," real and imagined, ranges from a gypsy circus, where Madeleine studies tumbling, to the home of a widow, where the strangely gifted circus performers act out tableaux vivants, and eventually to a mental hospital, before returning to Madeleine's family and home in rural France.

As in our own dreams, strange connections occur among the characters. Madeleine, at one point, becomes the Madeleine from the children's stories about a Parisian convent school, her real-life brothers and sisters appear in the mental hospital dream sequence, and she engages in a love triangle, which becomes a literary joke when the author tries to figure out how to conclude the love story of three characters. Irony takes on new meaning in a book that is itself so out-of-the-ordinary, and the humor is both broad and dark as Madeleine's dreams constantly juxtapose unlikely elements.

The "action," while intriguing on a psychological, dream-like level, sometimes leaves the reader feeling starved for connections to reality, however, and the novel is often self-conscious. Though most readers will see some parallels between action within the dreams and the fantasies of typical adolescents, many will also find it difficult to identify with the cartoonish characters on a personal level or to care much about what happens to them. Art and creativity are strong themes in what passes for the plot, and the conclusion re-emphasizes this theme. Fascinating and often beautifully poetic, the novel ultimately feels like a literary exercise, containing some universal elements of reality, but distanced from the reader. Mary Whipple

In "Indivisible," one of the vignettes that compose Bynum's mesmerizing new novel, one of the characters reminisces about a children's story of a tailor who stitched his shadow to himself. "And she knows that, as with all things sutured, the two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both. She is certain of it. Yes she persists in picking at the edges; she delights in seeing how the wound seeps, where the scab has been lifted away by a fingernail."

This vignette is emblematic of how Bynum's novel operates. The "real" and the "unreal" or "dream-like" are sutured together throughout the book. Can they be separated? Probably not, but we readers keep trying, we keep "picking at the edges," trying to sort out the separation. Bynum seems to be suggesting that reading is not so much a creative act as it is a destructive one. Trying to separate the real and the dream in this novel would, if we could do it, destroy the book.

But, of course, none of the novel is "real." It's all a verbal representation on a series of pages. Some of the words represent "real" things (e.g. Le Petomane, a unique musical performer who actually lived in France a century ago), but in the novel, those things aren't the actual things, merely verbal constructs of them. So as we read and try to figure out what is a dream and what is "real," we're being drawn into the story, seduced into believing that at least some of it is "real." Or at least that some parts are more "real" than the "dream" parts. And that act of believing is a creative act of reading.

So Bynum's great accomplishment is to involve us in simultaneous acts of creation and destruction as we read her novel. A careful reader can't help but do both, for we cannot do one without the other. This is an exhilarating novel to read as a result.

This book slips off its clothes at a very seductive, rhythmic pace. I was engaged in its turns of phrase and of plot. Very like a dream, and in an innocent, artful way that actually pulls you in deeper and deeper. I read it too fast, though--- it is a page turner as well. I highly recommend this book.

I read "Madeleine Is Sleeping" after "Ms. Hempel Chronicles," taking them out of their publication date order. This earlier work is a truly original piece of writing comprised of a number of vignettes about the young Madeleine, her family in their provincial French town, an odd collection of wandering carnies, and oh yes a fat woman who suddenly sprouts wings and begins tracking her fecal deposits. The story is completely whimsical, as though it was plucked from the brain of an unsuspecting, daydreaming child. I certainly cannot fault Bynum on originality, though the abstractness of her writing does make it difficult to adequately describe the plot.

I was fascinated by this book and unlike other books that have left me constantly questioning my comprehension and grasp of what is really going on, I was never frustrated. If you choose to pick up this book, you must do so knowing full well that it will require you to accept the unnatural and feel the story rather than overthink it. The quality of the writing is excellent - I was impressed with Bynum's attention to detail, descriptions, and characters. I will warn the potential reader that it does contain some mature content and might not be appropriate for more junior readers (despite focusing so acutely on children and growing up). Though I prefer her later work, I have great admiration for this author and will be very curious to see what she publishes next.

I read these 5 star reviews and the synopsis and couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. I like odd. I read the first few pages/chapters and thought it was "different", but kept waiting to be taken away to a dreamland carnaval. I forced myself to keep going, thinking it was just a slow-starter but I was never seduced like the other reviewers. Very interesting premise, but I was quite disappointed.

Sighing, rustling, the sounds of sleep; a torrent of sensations surround the reader from the start in this stunning fiction, a remarkable debut, assaulting with images of Reubanesque shapes, the sweet, slightly rancid taste of butter, "dirty children with fat melting in their fists." It is poetry, barely disguised, metaphor unbridled.

It is impossible to describe such a novel, draped with concupiscent women and gaunt saints, unabashedly erotic, cautionary and fearless, a celebration of inventiveness. All is larger than life, most especially flesh-draped bodies, but also the tragi-comedic range of emotions, of extremes. Myriad images and sensory impressions thread one to another, weaving fragments of thought into whole cloth.

Imagination, morality, Eros and ambiguity lie side by side, contentedly coexisting. The uniquely talented Sarah Shun-Lien Bynam has given an hour or two the transcendence of immortality. Madeline Is Sleeping is a highly personal journey, one that can only be appreciated through the experience. If my words do not make sense, it is because they are mine; like a dream, each person must recognize his own reflection. Luan Gaines/2004.

This book is very pleasing to read because of the lyrical writing. Lyrical is the perfect word to describe this book's writing. Certain passages are worth reading over and over because of the wonderful images created by words. This book to me seems to be a deeper metaphor for transitions of any kind, not just the transition we go through when we leave behind childhood. Because of these things, and the dream like quality of the writing of the book in general,I would be more likely to call this book a prose poem rather than a novel.

I enjoyed the book quite a book and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in something other than mainstream fiction.

The novel offers a ripe setting infused with poetic language and seamless sequences of the surreal. Bynum succesfully creates a luscious scene for each part of Madeleine's dream. This novel captures the delicious wonderment of adolescence in all its curious mischeviousness and the strangeness that accompanies it.

Bynum fuses poetry and prose to create a beautiful piece. The running theme of music (the opera, le petomane's gift, the violin) the circus, unrequited love, and the gross but sensually delightful images of Mme. Colchon, the sexual mishappening with the town dullard, and the details of Madeleine's enchanted sleep are each uniquely arresting.

The form is much like Evan Connell's Mrs. Bridge-- the language mellifluous and never cumbersome. It is no surprise that this book was a national fiction finalist.

And as an endnote, I am currently a student of Bynum and have to unashamedly announce my enthusiasm for her love of writing, literature, and teaching. The experience has been challenging and wonderfully enriching.

Madeleine is Sleeping is one of those strange novels that you can't quite pin down. The language is poetic in many places, yet sometimes strives too hard to be so and therefore is both a plus and minus. The plot doesn't really do much as plots normally do, yet it's just interesting enough in just enough places that it pulls you along in fits and starts and so is in various places a plus and in others a minus. The characters don't ever really grab you as fully fleshed characters, never really evoke much empathy, yet they're just off the wall enough and just poignant enough in spots that you feel you'd kind of miss them if they just disappeared. The meanings within meanings are sometimes thought-provoking or simply fun while at other times they are startlingly and awkwardly obvious. The structure, a lot of little vignettes surrounded by a lot of white space works for the purposes of the novel, but at the same time feels a bit too gimmicky. And the whole thing strikes you at times as wonderfully original and playful, and at other times like a grad student trying too hard and too obviously to be wonderfully original and playful.
In the end, I'd say Madeleine is Sleeping is worth a read (perhaps partially because it's such a slim book with so much white space that one doesn't invest much actual time in reading it) since its pleasures generally do outweigh its negatives. But be prepared to veer between highs and lows every few pages. There's never really a long lag, but then there's never really a long stretch where you don't wince once or twice either. Recommended, but not enthusiastically.