Customer Reviews

When She Sleeps

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

No one is immune from war, no matter the outcome. Countries may shake hands, sign treaties and make peace, but human beings are left with scars, harsh memories and frail emotions-complicated legacies of war that settle into bodies, hearts and souls and are often passed down through the generations.
Such is the case in Leora Krygier's stunning new novel. When She Sleeps, where each character is touched by war in ways that change who they are and who they become. As a therapist, I am fascinated by the way Krygier lets the reader into the psyches of her characters, especially the two 15 year old half sisters, Mai in Vietnam and Lucy in Los Angeles. The story, of their lives and families and how they eventually find each other, speaks in the voices of these two young women. Peripherally, we enter the minds of the other family members, especially Linh, the mother of Mai, a beautiful and brillant linguist whose life and love blossomed in the sixties only to have it yanked away from under her feet. Her once steady mind, takes a downward spiral not unlike the fall of Saigon. But juxtaposed to this fall, is Mai's hope and strength and resolve to find her American father. We pull for Mai and for Lucy, her half-sister and we are not disappointed in the real outcome of a journey that began with a dream.

When She Sleeps is a beautifully written and compelling story, one thaat leaves an indelible mark, not only in the world of good literature, but in this reader's mind as well.

We often hear of the macro consequences of the Vietnam War, but rarely get a glimpse, as we do here, into the micro or the personal. In this brilliant new novel, Leora Krygier transports the reader into the hearts and minds ˆ both conscious and subconscious ˆ of an American family and a Vietnamese family in 1977 as they live with and live through the consequences of war. The language is rich with symbols, metaphors and cinematic descriptions that enhance the story, allowing the reader to see and hear what they are reading. When She Sleeps is a beautifully crafted novel, with each diverse character a story unto his or her self. I couldn‚t put this book down; it kept me awake all night. I recommend When She Sleeps for people of all ages, from mid-teens on up. It is the best book I‚ve read this year.

This is no ordinary novel. After only a few haunting pages, I jotted down: The author's words hover between heaven and earth. They are flesh and spirit. This book soars on gossamer wings.

It is the language that separates this book from many another novel as well. Leora Krygier obviously loves language and chooses her words carefully. She writes with surgical precision and poetic sensibility. She cuts away to the clean, clear, economic essence of things.

Krygier provides fascinating cultural glimpses of Vietnam, past and present, including myths and legends, as they bear on this story. As the narrative shifts to Paris, the author gives us an informed, tangible sense of the city's significant, applicable details. Los Angeles and its surroundings, too, come vividly alive, observed, selectively, with keen insight and fine descriptive powers.

"When She Sleeps" is a gem of writing, story-telling and human insight. It's about damaged lives. It's about secrets and suffering. It's about abandonment and betrayal. It's about the presence and absence, the distortions and aberrations of love. It's about coping. It's about despair and hope. It's a profoundly moving story.

Rolf Gompertz
Author of "Abraham, The Dreamer,
An Erotic and Sacred Love Story"

At the end of "The Interpretation of Dreams", Freud concludes that our dreams give us knowledge of our past, from which they are derived. They also foretell our future because they are our wishes, which we picture as fulfilled dreams. Dreams merge our past with our present and future. They are doors to our souls.

In "When She Sleeps", Leora Krygier explores the world of dreams. She uses the dreamscape as a vehicle to unite her main characters. In this beautifully written novel the author tells the story of two teenage sisters, separated by war and culture, who journey toward each other through their dreams.

The novel begins with Mai's story, one of loss and regret. After living in poverty in the Vietnam countryside, the Amerasian teenager returns to the ruined city of Saigon with her mother Linh and her grandmother Thanh. Once in the city, Linh asks a reluctant Mai to promise never to call her mother again. Linh, a linguist, understands the power of words, and she no longer wishes to assume the responsibility the word "mother' implies. To Mai this is just another theft in a long line of thefts. The Vietnam War has stolen both her father and home from her, and now she has also lost her mother.

In an attempt to heal herself, Mai searches for her father, who in the chaos of the American evacuation left her and her mother behind, promising to return. Not finding her father on the streets of Saigon or even at the hotel where her parents used to meet, she enters her mother's dreams. By invading and stealing these dreams, the lonely teenager attempts to know her mad mother and discover her absent father. Finally, she reaches out to her American sister.

Lucy, the American sister, lives a life filled with middle class comfort that is at first glance the opposite of Mai's, but she is also lonely and unable to sleep in a house filled with her parent's discontent. She escapes at first into her darkroom where she experiments with the images she has captured with her camera. Soon she will learn to sleep, and in her dreamscape she will discover new images, some sent to her by her sister and others part of her mother's past.

Eventually the sisters meet when Mai finally arrives in L.A. They have come full circle. Now it is the younger sister who, having lost her mother has also lost her ability to sleep and dream. In the meantime, Lucy has rediscovered both her mother and her dreams.

I found it interesting that Mai was not cured of her sleeplessness by her father, now a prominent sleep expert, but by Evelyn, his wife. Evelyn betrayed by her husband's infidelity and the knowledge that he had wanted to abandon her and Lucy for Linh and Mai, transcends this to become the mother Mai needs. She returns Mai's dreams to her with care and understanding.

"When She Sleeps" is a masterful story of love, betrayal, and forgiveness that holds the reader's attention until the very end. The characters are three-dimensional beings that we can pity, sympathize with, like or dislike. Their lives matter to us, and that is the sign of a well-crafted tale.

This beautiful novel is a reminder that the sad legacy of the Vietnam War continues to haunt us and remains a part of our national consciousness. The real-life stories of the offspring of American soldiers and Vietnamese women are often forgotten, but not in this gem of a book which reveals the painful aftermath of family secrets. The rich language gives the story a magical feel, restoring hope that time will heal these wounds as well.

A beautiful book. This novel of two half-sisters, children of the Vietnam war, struggling to find each other, pulled me into their lives from the the first page to the last. Krygier has a perfect sense of place, relationships, and emotions. I could hear the noises and smell the smells of Saigon, Thailand, Paris, and Los Angeles, while I lived the girls' journey. Read it and give it to someone you love. [Note: the author is a good friend.]

A gripping plot and entrancing language keep the reader both firmly on the ground and aloft in a spirit world, where dreams slip in and out of bodies, usurped, transfered, in Leora Krygier's ethereal novel.

WHEN SHE SLEEPS is, at the same time, both an astonishingly beautiful and an emotionally haunting book. Leora Krygier weaves passages in her novel from individual words in ways that an artist weaves a tapestry from individual silken threads.

Leora expertly delves into the psyches of people affected by the Vietnam War within three countries: the United States, Vietnam, and France. She also portrays the pain of several characters affected by World War II and the holocaust. Leora paints a picture - with broad brush strokes and minute details - of how war entangles people's hearts and souls and minds and distorts their philosophies. She binds characters to each other in ways that people truly bind themselves to each other - for better or for worse - when they become intimately involved. She shows how family can form on two sides of an ocean when a man fathers one child with his wife in the United States and another child with a lover in Vietnam. She tells the story of how this leads, really, to one family tied together by history, genetic similarities, and yearning.

As all great books do, WHEN SHE SLEEPS transcends the individual story created within this novel. It shows, with stark naked exposure, how people react to pain and loss and dysfunction within multiple contexts of family, country, and culture.

WHEN SHE SLEEPS has all the makings of a classic.

If all were fair in the publishing world, When She Sleeps would become a classic. More readable than Faulkner but just as thoughtful, YOU deserve the pleasure of reading this book!

East and West, dark and light, mental anguish and psychological survival, dreams and sleep told in language that both sings and paints, carry this story of two-half sisters, a world apart, from the murky fog of memory, both stolen and real, into the light of wakefulness and truth.

For me, the best kind of writing is strong and delicate, and allows the reader to discover the story with all its nuances, meanings and metaphors. Krygier's writing employs this kind of delicate strength as her characters deal with the aftermath of the Vietnam War and illustrate how it became part of our American DNA. When She Sleeps, by Leora Krygier, is a must-read for all people who savor language, read with depth and enjoy the discovery of a new favorite author.