Marianne is teetering at the edge of reason. A death in the family sends her brilliant academic career and promising future spiraling out of control until resentment towards those who shaped her past leads her on a wild and desperate search for the truth about herself. On the seedy side of New York, she meets Miles, a hip musician busking the streets and playing low-rent venues in a muddled bid to make his own dreams come true. In her new life, she finds anarchic squalor, home grown music and poetry, booze, drugs, sex, violence, love, loss, and, above all, exhilarating freedom on her troubled journey from sleep to awakening. This gritty, relentless story unfolds with the same cool detachment that motivates the central character to peel back the layers of her life and expose the painful scalding within.
Sleep Before Evening
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store. |
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
It is moving and harsh and every word seemed true ... a great read. -- Bria Phillips
From the Publisher
Sleep Before Evening has been listed as a Finalist in the Regional Fiction category of the 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
No, "Sleep Before Evening" isn't a how-to book for either teens or parents. It does, however, give insight into the horrors of drug addiction, how it can happen to anyone and how it can escalate. We are all affected by it and it may some day creep up on us with silent paws to become part of our lives in a personal way. Having some understanding of the disease, how it can escalate and how it is not a cause for shame but for action can make a difference if and when that happens.
This is a wonderful book, a story told with compassion and one that, as a volunteer drug counselor, I know rings so very heartbreakingly true.
----
Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of THIS IS THE PLACE, HARKENING and a chapbook of poetry, TRACINGS, all available on Amaazon.
This is a wonderful book, a story told with compassion and one that, as a volunteer drug counselor, I know rings so very heartbreakingly true.
----
Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of THIS IS THE PLACE, HARKENING and a chapbook of poetry, TRACINGS, all available on Amaazon.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By C. Hautmann
Format:Paperback
The dialogue is solid and believable, and the characters live and breathe and scratch themselves. The drug scenes and the horrors of dependence are especially well-rendered, but the story is ultimately uplifting and optimistic. It is a triumph of the soul. Read this book. CHAD HAUTMANN, author of Billie's Ghost
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
(excerpt)
As the drama coils tighter and tighter, it is the exquisite quality of writing that keeps the reader utterly glued. As Marianne struggles with her demons and we almost hold our breath as she nears her eighteenth birthday, Magdalena Ball's Sleep Before Evening shows us that in order to find yourself, you sometimes have to lose yourself first.
For full review, please see The Rose and Thorn ezine
As the drama coils tighter and tighter, it is the exquisite quality of writing that keeps the reader utterly glued. As Marianne struggles with her demons and we almost hold our breath as she nears her eighteenth birthday, Magdalena Ball's Sleep Before Evening shows us that in order to find yourself, you sometimes have to lose yourself first.
For full review, please see The Rose and Thorn ezine
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sleep Before Evening
When Marianne,s grandfather dies,she takes his death very hard. In her eyes her mom seems to have gotten over his death to fast. Read more
Published 8 months ago by lady g
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sleep Before Evening
Sleep Before Evening (Magdalena Ball)
Marianne is taking the death of her grandfather very hard. Read more
Marianne is taking the death of her grandfather very hard. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Sheri A. Wilkinson
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Slow Death
This story shows just how easy it is to follow a path to self-destruction, by taking only one step at a time.
Do we step this way or that? Read more
Do we step this way or that? Read more
Published 18 months ago by widdershins
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sad Subject Drug Addiction Wrapped in an Artful Way
I've often wondered if it was wise for a poet to try novel writing. Obviously Magdalene has a talent for both. It amazes me that this is her first novel. It is that good. Read more
Published 22 months ago by W. Joyce White
5.0 out of 5 stars
Musical prose at its best!
I am so excited to have found another author to fall in love with. I'm really picky with what I read, and I tend to lean toward more character-driven works, than driving plots. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Jessica Bell
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gritty and eye-opening
Ms. Ball has written a wonderful tale of the seedier side of life and the unfailing ease in which one can fall into a world that is not of their own norm.
Published on July 16, 2009 by T. Quijas
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brave Choice
The plot of SLEEP BEFORE EVENING is a brave author choice. Teen Marianne takes us on her journey into loss, grief, and medicating her pain with substance abuse. Read more
Published on September 11, 2008 by Frances Schelly
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Fist Full of Reality
Marianne {Mari} Cottons life soon turns from picture perfect to a nightmare in a heartbeat, after her grandfather's death. Read more
Published on January 22, 2008 by Petra B. Lozano
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Cautionary Coming-of-Age Story
What we have here is a full-on rush of ambitious literary fiction. That it largely succeeds as such is no consolation to horny but bookish males hoping for a bit of fluff or a few... Read more
Published on December 28, 2007 by Gerald Everett Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sleep Before Evening - an "addictive" book
Life isn't perfect, but seventeen-year-old Marianne Cotton is blessed with a loving and devoted grandfather who carefully schools her in piano, the arts, and literature. Read more
Published on September 24, 2007 by Aaron P. Lazar
