After her father commits suicide, Susan discovers that her unhappiness is rooted in her dark family history and awakens from an emotional stupor to begin an affair in the eighth month of pregnancy. A first novel. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The trouble with this disconcerting first novel is not so much the premise-that a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy is seduced by a man to whom she proves irresistible-but that all the characters are unappealing, and some are downright revolting. The narrator, Susan, is a would-be artist who married her successful management-consultant husband Alastair despite the fact that she did not love him. She elicits little sympathy from the reader, despite the unhappy circumstances of her life, which she recalls in flashback. Her father, Douglas, who has just committed suicide as the novel opens, was viciously mean and sadistically spiteful, the kind of man whose idea of a good time is to take his three young daughters to see the bodies of the rats he has shot. It's no wonder that he turned out so badly, having been brutally mistreated by his mother, the loathsome Queenie, whose hateful conduct is the stuff of melodrama but not of psychologically grounded behavior. Traumatized by both her progenitors, Susan feels she has been sleepwalking through life. Then, when she begins seeing her father's ghost, she realizes that he actually walked in his sleep as a boy. When Lenny, a talented but indigent artist, tells the very pregnant Susan that he adores her, she hopes the affair will bring an end to her "deep, heart-gripping desolation." But the self-pitying tone of this novel, the lack of credible characterization and the assumption that the reader will feel empathy with the suddenly liberated Susan when she decides she must leave her decent, likable husband, make it thoroughly distasteful. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The eighth month of pregnancy proves difficult for Susan. Her remote and unhappy father has committed suicide, and Susan is now haunted by the ghost of him as a boy. Emotionally immature herself, Susan has drifted most of her life, detached from those around her. Shocked out of her detachment by her father's death, Susan begins an affair with a sexually enticing artist while her husband, supportive and loving, does his best to understand a wife who seems interested only in withdrawing from him. Myerson's portrait of the tortured family relationships in this first novel has subtle power; the reader soon feels an overwhelming pity for most of the damaged people portrayed here. All in all, an impressive debut; recommended for most fiction collections.
Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hmmmm,
By saliero (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sleepwalking (Paperback)
I thought the scenes of Susan's "haunting" were excellently handled. Would love to have a little more fleshed out about her relationship with her sisters in the wake of her father's suicide. But, as to one of the main "events' - the affair, I'm afraid I just didn't buy it. The juxtaposition of the heart-on-sleeve emotionalism of the American, with the reserved coolness of the Briton wasn't enough for me to feel that this affair was 'real', and the passion just wasn't there for me. Lennie seemed to lack a dimension or something!The novel is written in a very spare style, and we never are sure whether the 'hormones' of late pregnancy ARE a factor or not - Susan rails against this possibility. Husband Alistair does seem a little bit of a Central Casting cliched husband, dismissive of his wife's trauma, shallow and patronising. This book was a reasonable read to fill in some idle hours, but I wouldn't rave about it. For a more elegantly written, and ultimately more hopeful story of childhood emotional abuse, I prefer Jenny Diski's 'Skating to Antarctica', which I read at the same time.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A SPLENDID DEBUT,
This review is from: Sleepwalking (Paperback)
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.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stylish and Chilling,
By Veronica (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sleepwalking (Paperback)
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
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