Sleep With Me [Paperback]

Joanna Briscoe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2006

Richard and Lelia's child is conceived in a moment of giggling chaos as they dress for a Christmas party. They arrive rudely late and still glowing, and barely register a slight, drab woman in the hall. Sylvie. As their baby grows, so does the presence of Sylvie - she seems to be nowhere, yet everywhere, harmless yet sinister. Richard is seduced by her subtle, inexplicable charm, while Lelia, struggling with Richard's sudden ambivalence towards their baby, finds that she is haunted by painful memories. And Sylvie remains as invisible as she wants to be - that is the source of her power. Beware of mice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The smart, suspenseful U.S. debut of Brit Briscoe (Skin; Mothers and Other Lovers) begins between the sheets as 30-somethings Lelia and Richard unknowingly conceive a child before breathlessly skipping across town to a friend's Christmas party. Though Richard, a newspaper editor, and Lelia, an academic, struggle with their careers, their values and the question of marriage, they are content in their relationship and their future together. Enter Sylvie Lavigne, a nondescript friend of a friend, new to town, who suddenly, mysteriously appears at their every turn. Richard receives a series of unsettling anonymous e-mails, serialized snippets of a Victorian-style novel with macabre overtones. As Lelia's pregnancy advances, both Lelia and Richard discover that their domestic calm is bound up in a web of deceit, uncertainty and unresolved memories. Told from alternating points of view, the story follows the couple as they become consumed by their individual doubts and obsessions. Briscoe has a knack for rendering a contemporary, urban setting, and her characters are intelligent and psychologically insightful, believable even as the plot takes its most fantastical twists. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In polished, formal prose, British novelist Briscoe (Skin, 1997) delivers an erotic thriller rife with themes of betrayal and obsession. As the novel opens, French literature teacher Lelia and book-review-editor Richard, deeply in love, attend a holiday party. In the background lurks Sylvie, a mousy, wraithlike woman whose presence barely registers. Seeing Richard and Lelia's relationship with a clarity not possessed by the couple, Sylvie insinuates herself into their lives. Richard, stressed about his friends' more lucrative careers and the news that Lelia is pregnant, finds himself vulnerable to Sylvie's attentions; he commissions her to write a book review, reads her e-mails containing fragments of a strange novel, and agrees to meet her for increasingly intimate rendezvous. Meanwhile, Lelia and Sylvie share a history unknown to Richard. Briscoe draws the rituals of seduction in mesmerizing fashion and homes in on the addictive nature of transgression. Even more impressive, though, is the way the contrast between her elegant prose and the often-repellent behavior of her characters heightens her novel's chilling, creepy atmosphere. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks (June 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747580774
• ISBN-13: 978-0747580775
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,684,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping and macabre, February 7, 2006

By 

Emma Kaufmann "Emma Kaufmann" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleep with Me: A Novel (Hardcover)

What a strange and vivid imagination Joanna Briscoe has. The quality of this book is like the dreams you have when you're feverish. The plot centers around an odd vampiric woman called Sylvie, who sets out to wreck the lives of a glossy London couple, Richard and Lelia. She subtley gets under both their skins, controlling their emotions, their lusts, their lives. In the process she exposes what awful self-obsessed people Richard and Lelia are, but that doesn't make us dislike Sylvie any the less. Briscoe's skill is in then turning the tale on its head. Just when you wish Sylvie would just go away and stop trying to wreck these people's lives, you find out more about her, about her motivations, and how by destoying this couple, she hopes to save herself.

Some critic called this book, 'like Ian McEwan but with better sex scenes' which is true. It is like early McEwan, before he went up his own backside and started writing longwinded and dull novels about the lives of surgeons. The sex scenes are very unusual. They are vivid and visceral and believable, yet curiously unerotic, you always feel the sex is purely there as a means of mind control or maybe a way of blotting out disturbing memories of the past. Still, all in all, a very compelling yet nightmarish read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Just short of great..., July 29, 2006

By 

DevJohn01 (Somerset, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleep with Me: A Novel (Hardcover)

Joanna Briscoe's 'SLEEP WITH ME' had me hooked from the first page. This enchantingly dark novel had all the stuff to make it a fantastic and unforgettable read, however, it seemed to fall just short of fantastic but still managed to be very memorable. The story about a very odd love triangle between Lelia and Richard, a couple who is very much in love and expecting their first child and the mysterious Sylvie Lavigne had me mesmerized throughout almost the entire novel trying to figure out who this Sylvie Lavigne was, and why she was trying to insinuate herself in Lelia and Richard's lives.

Clues to Sylvie's true identity are revealed, in my opinion, a bit too early leaving few surprises for the ending. Also how Sylvie manages to cast her spell on everyone from Richard and Lelia to some of their best friends and even co-workers leaves the reader to wonder how such a plain and reticent woman managed to have so many people pining after her. I did not feel as though those questions were sufficiently answered, where as in doing so Ms. Briscoe could have really taken this novel to another level. Despite these flaws 'SLEEP WITH ME' is a haunting tale that will stick with the reader for a long time, 3 1/2 stars.

3.0 out of 5 stars GREAT beginning, but wanders in second half..., September 12, 2008

By 

Erin (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleep With Me (Paperback)

The novel opens with a playful meeting between Richard and his girlfriend Lelia just before they attend a friend's Christmas party. Both of them meet a "mousey" young woman named Sylvie at the party, who begins to reappear in their lives with mysterious frequency. At the same time, Lelia is pregnant with a baby conceived on the night of the party, and Richard begins receiving disturbing e-mails that appear to come from a novel that he thinks he can recognize...

Briscoe is great in examining complex themes from multiple angles and viewpoints throughout the book: the politics of sex, the unreliability of memory, loyalty and lies, etc. She keeps the pace steady throughout so that you want to read on and find out who Sylvie really is, how Richard and Lelia cope with things that go wrong in their relationship, and the horrifying background that ties them all together. Briscoe inserts just enough lyrically-written backstory to explain key points without dragging the story away from its intriguing present. In this regard, I'm going to echo several reviewers and say she is reminiscent of Ian McEwan, especially in her approach to modern sex politics.

However, where McEwan can tie together sprawling personalities between characters and finish the story, Briscoe leads us through complex psychological issues with her characters and then ends it abruptly. When your main characters are not supposed to be liked, you need to give the reader a greater reason for finishing the story. There needs to be a more satisfying arc to their development that the reader can still empathize with, and this book just doesn't have it.

Briscoe starts off with a great, haunting atmosphere in a doomed relationship, but leaves her readers in the mist.