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Sleepwalking
The debut novel from New York Times–bestselling author Meg Wolitzer, a story of three college students’ shared fascination with poetry and death, and how one of them must face difficult truths in order to leave her obsession behind.
Published when she was only twenty-three and written while she was a student at Brown, Sleepwalking marks the beginning of Meg Wolitzer’s acclaimed career. Filled with her usual wisdom, compassion and insight, Sleepwalking tells the story of the three notorious “death girls,” so called on the Swarthmore campus because they dress in black and are each absorbed in the work and suicide of a different poet: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Wolitzer’s creation Lucy Asher, a gifted writer who drowned herself at twenty-four. At night the death girls gather in a candlelit room to read their heroines’ work aloud.
But an affair with Julian, an upperclassman, pushes sensitive , struggling Claire Danziger—she of the Lucy Asher obsession-–to consider to what degree her “death girl” identity is really who she is. As she grapples with her feelings for Julian, her own understanding of herself and her past begins to shift uncomfortably and even disturbingly. Finally, Claire takes drastic measures to confront the facts about herself that she has been avoiding for years.
Published when she was only twenty-three and written while she was a student at Brown, Sleepwalking marks the beginning of Meg Wolitzer’s acclaimed career. Filled with her usual wisdom, compassion and insight, Sleepwalking tells the story of the three notorious “death girls,” so called on the Swarthmore campus because they dress in black and are each absorbed in the work and suicide of a different poet: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Wolitzer’s creation Lucy Asher, a gifted writer who drowned herself at twenty-four. At night the death girls gather in a candlelit room to read their heroines’ work aloud.
But an affair with Julian, an upperclassman, pushes sensitive , struggling Claire Danziger—she of the Lucy Asher obsession-–to consider to what degree her “death girl” identity is really who she is. As she grapples with her feelings for Julian, her own understanding of herself and her past begins to shift uncomfortably and even disturbingly. Finally, Claire takes drastic measures to confront the facts about herself that she has been avoiding for years.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
142 people are currently reading
21202 people want to read
About the author
Meg Wolitzer
49 books3,024 followersMeg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 704 reviews
April 22, 2020
i honestly don’t know if this is objectively a five star book, but it completely captured me while i was reading it and after i finished i went for a walk in some woods and cried a little and if that reaction doesn’t get a five idk what should
September 28, 2020
the part of me that sat on tumblr in 2013 until 4am reblogging sad quotes felt so seen and understood by this book.
January 20, 2019
Reading this was a bit like taking a trip wherein the journey is, hands down, the best part. There was just a certain je ne sais quoi to Ms. Wolitzer's writing that captured me and carried me right along and it really didn't matter where we'd end up.
Of course, Goodreads friends do give the best happiness gifts. Huge thank you to my friend, Leslie, for turning me on to yet another new (to me) author.
Of course, Goodreads friends do give the best happiness gifts. Huge thank you to my friend, Leslie, for turning me on to yet another new (to me) author.
September 18, 2020
(Yes, Kat [paperbackdreams on Youtube] brought me here too)
Why is my 2020 reading list filled with books I thought were going to be about [x thing], but turned out to be anything but? This is the fourth one by now; The Glass Hotel (we barely even set foot in the hotel), Supper Club (more about the narrator's internalized misogyny in which she brags about being fuckable because she's skinny, less about the titular Supper Club parties), And I Do Not Forgive You (less than half of the stories were actually about revenge)
And now? The synopsis promises us the ~death girls~, a story of three college students’ shared fascination with poetry and death, and even makes sure to highlight each girl's favourite poet. The book is surely about them, yes? NO. The book is actually about one of the three girls specifically and her navigating the grief from her brother's death alongside her Golden Retriever of a boyfriend, who's 1/3 attracted by her allure, 1/3 scared shitless of her, and 1/3 ~wants to save her from herself~ It's very telling that it's the boyfriend who and not her "friends".
In fact, the girls never get a proper scene together. We get a (dry as fuck) narrative chapter in the beginning that tells us (not shows) of the girls' poetry reading nights, and how close they are, and how great it was that they had found each other because they're so alike..... and then the book proceeds to put them all together in a scene once (!) again ages later, in which they're fighting because they've already drifted apart. Am I supposed to care? We never SAW them together, we never got a feeling of how they are all together, we're only TOLD that. There's no "death girls" to speak of. They're not a group that exists in the book, only in Meg Wolitzer's imagination, and we're supposed to take those little narrative nuggets and run with them.
I was really irked when The Furies did that as well: promised us a girl group and then laser-focused on only two of the girls, leaving the others in the dust. Why promise a group of people if you're only going to write about one or two of those people? What's the point?
I also don't understand why the other characters in the book thought Claire was soooo fantastic, with everyone running around her in circles, squealing for her attention. She's distant, she's cold, she's not particularly charismatic as far as I can tell (unless this is another thing I'm supposed to take as well established just because Meg Wolitzer thinks so herself) Is it because she's ~mysterious~? I was honestly more concerned and interested about Laura's increasingly erratic and irritable behaviour (that no character seemed to care about, even when these girls are supposed to be friends) than Claire fucking off to live with a grieving family* because she wants to wear Lucy Asher's skin.
Honestly, this was very obviously the author's first book. The writing is simplistic, plain, and reads like she whipped it up in 2 days because it was due tomorrow for a creative writing class, and none of the themes are explored with any kind of nuance (sometimes it feels like the author is hitting you over the head with a shoe, screaming "GRIEF IS A PROCESS! NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO GO THROUGH IT ALONE! DO WHAT'S NECESSARY TO GET THROUGH IT! ONE DAY YOU'LL WAKE UP AND IT'LL BE OKAY!"). There were more scenes of characters gushing over how great Claire is than the ~death girls~ all together, or people talking to each other in earnest, something this book badly needed. What a disappointment.
*The Ashers were the only likeable and rather well-written people in the book. You can feel their grief and their connection to each other even when they don't feel it themselves, and they're both kindhearted, even if it's a bit creepy that they essentially replaced Lucy with Claire, even if it was -mercifully- only for a little bit.
Why is my 2020 reading list filled with books I thought were going to be about [x thing], but turned out to be anything but? This is the fourth one by now; The Glass Hotel (we barely even set foot in the hotel), Supper Club (more about the narrator's internalized misogyny in which she brags about being fuckable because she's skinny, less about the titular Supper Club parties), And I Do Not Forgive You (less than half of the stories were actually about revenge)
And now? The synopsis promises us the ~death girls~, a story of three college students’ shared fascination with poetry and death, and even makes sure to highlight each girl's favourite poet. The book is surely about them, yes? NO. The book is actually about one of the three girls specifically and her navigating the grief from her brother's death alongside her Golden Retriever of a boyfriend, who's 1/3 attracted by her allure, 1/3 scared shitless of her, and 1/3 ~wants to save her from herself~ It's very telling that it's the boyfriend who and not her "friends".
In fact, the girls never get a proper scene together. We get a (dry as fuck) narrative chapter in the beginning that tells us (not shows) of the girls' poetry reading nights, and how close they are, and how great it was that they had found each other because they're so alike..... and then the book proceeds to put them all together in a scene once (!) again ages later, in which they're fighting because they've already drifted apart. Am I supposed to care? We never SAW them together, we never got a feeling of how they are all together, we're only TOLD that. There's no "death girls" to speak of. They're not a group that exists in the book, only in Meg Wolitzer's imagination, and we're supposed to take those little narrative nuggets and run with them.
I was really irked when The Furies did that as well: promised us a girl group and then laser-focused on only two of the girls, leaving the others in the dust. Why promise a group of people if you're only going to write about one or two of those people? What's the point?
I also don't understand why the other characters in the book thought Claire was soooo fantastic, with everyone running around her in circles, squealing for her attention. She's distant, she's cold, she's not particularly charismatic as far as I can tell (unless this is another thing I'm supposed to take as well established just because Meg Wolitzer thinks so herself) Is it because she's ~mysterious~? I was honestly more concerned and interested about Laura's increasingly erratic and irritable behaviour (that no character seemed to care about, even when these girls are supposed to be friends) than Claire fucking off to live with a grieving family* because she wants to wear Lucy Asher's skin.
Honestly, this was very obviously the author's first book. The writing is simplistic, plain, and reads like she whipped it up in 2 days because it was due tomorrow for a creative writing class, and none of the themes are explored with any kind of nuance (sometimes it feels like the author is hitting you over the head with a shoe, screaming "GRIEF IS A PROCESS! NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO GO THROUGH IT ALONE! DO WHAT'S NECESSARY TO GET THROUGH IT! ONE DAY YOU'LL WAKE UP AND IT'LL BE OKAY!"). There were more scenes of characters gushing over how great Claire is than the ~death girls~ all together, or people talking to each other in earnest, something this book badly needed. What a disappointment.
*The Ashers were the only likeable and rather well-written people in the book. You can feel their grief and their connection to each other even when they don't feel it themselves, and they're both kindhearted, even if it's a bit creepy that they essentially replaced Lucy with Claire, even if it was -mercifully- only for a little bit.
February 20, 2024
i wish i had read this book when i was a teenager because i know 14 year old me in the trenches of tumblr and sylvia plath lore would’ve loved this.
July 31, 2020
I was so excited for this book. Thought I was going to read The Bell Jar all over again. The characters, the story everything was going perfect but halfway through the book I lost it. Idk, but it wasn't what I expected.
June 22, 2020
it seems like im the only person on my friends list who has read this. dare i say, people have been
sleeping
on this book lol. *drum roll* (im going to jail bye)
if an indie art house movie were a book then this would be it! that’s the only way i can describe this book.
meg wolitzer was merely a student when she finished writing this book and by reading this you wouldn’t even know that it was her first book that’s how well written it is.
the book is only 270 pages long but so intricately detailed. there’s not much of a plot but the characters are well written and every single thing what the characters think is written. it deals with some very heavy stuff such as death especially death of your children and grief in a very subtle way. i’m excited to read more of her work in future.
rating - 4/5
if an indie art house movie were a book then this would be it! that’s the only way i can describe this book.
meg wolitzer was merely a student when she finished writing this book and by reading this you wouldn’t even know that it was her first book that’s how well written it is.
the book is only 270 pages long but so intricately detailed. there’s not much of a plot but the characters are well written and every single thing what the characters think is written. it deals with some very heavy stuff such as death especially death of your children and grief in a very subtle way. i’m excited to read more of her work in future.
rating - 4/5
February 18, 2022
It feels a bit silly and pointless to critique the 1982 debut of a prolific and well-established author on the grounds that it reads like a debut, but I have to get my criticisms out of the way: this book was remarkably clumsy—it reads like two concepts for two different novels stapled rather than sewn together.
The first of the two concepts is the story of ‘the death girls,’ three Swarthmore freshman who are each obsessed with a different female poet who died by suicide (Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and an invented poet, Lucy Ascher). The novel introduces the three girls with the striking opening sentence ‘They talked about death as if it were a country in Europe’ and the prologue continues on to explain their strange friendship, predicated on a similar reverence for death—but then this conceit falls away completely. Naomi and Laura, two of the death girls, barely factor into this novel at all—this is the story of Claire, coming to terms with the death of her brother as well as the death of her favorite poet; her story is shared only by the parents of Lucy Ascher, who have fallen apart in the years since their daughter died.
Enter the second concept: an unsentimental excavation of the many faces of grief. In spite of the obvious thematic parallels between these two narratives that Wolitzer thought up, she is unable to integrate them into one another in a way that doesn’t feel forced and unnatural. The ‘death girl’ setup (as well as the introduction to Claire's narratively pointless boyfriend, Julian) is ultimately the framework for the novel’s real aims, but it’s flimsy and unconvincing and honestly a bit of a letdown to anyone who approaches this looking for a Secret History-esque campus novel about close-knit friendships. (The bulk of the novel takes place off campus, to add insult to injury.)
But that’s all okay—again, it’s a debut by an author who’s been working for 40 years, so it’s hard not to give Wolitzer the benefit of the doubt. And in spite of all the aforementioned clumsiness, I really enjoyed reading this book. Wolitzer's meditations on death and grief are surprisingly fresh and insightful, and though the other death girls don't leave much of an impression, Claire is a remarkably well-drawn character. This was actually my first Wolitzer, and I'm interested to see how her style has evolved through the years.
The first of the two concepts is the story of ‘the death girls,’ three Swarthmore freshman who are each obsessed with a different female poet who died by suicide (Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and an invented poet, Lucy Ascher). The novel introduces the three girls with the striking opening sentence ‘They talked about death as if it were a country in Europe’ and the prologue continues on to explain their strange friendship, predicated on a similar reverence for death—but then this conceit falls away completely. Naomi and Laura, two of the death girls, barely factor into this novel at all—this is the story of Claire, coming to terms with the death of her brother as well as the death of her favorite poet; her story is shared only by the parents of Lucy Ascher, who have fallen apart in the years since their daughter died.
Enter the second concept: an unsentimental excavation of the many faces of grief. In spite of the obvious thematic parallels between these two narratives that Wolitzer thought up, she is unable to integrate them into one another in a way that doesn’t feel forced and unnatural. The ‘death girl’ setup (as well as the introduction to Claire's narratively pointless boyfriend, Julian) is ultimately the framework for the novel’s real aims, but it’s flimsy and unconvincing and honestly a bit of a letdown to anyone who approaches this looking for a Secret History-esque campus novel about close-knit friendships. (The bulk of the novel takes place off campus, to add insult to injury.)
But that’s all okay—again, it’s a debut by an author who’s been working for 40 years, so it’s hard not to give Wolitzer the benefit of the doubt. And in spite of all the aforementioned clumsiness, I really enjoyed reading this book. Wolitzer's meditations on death and grief are surprisingly fresh and insightful, and though the other death girls don't leave much of an impression, Claire is a remarkably well-drawn character. This was actually my first Wolitzer, and I'm interested to see how her style has evolved through the years.
October 15, 2023
Reading a summary of Sleepwalking led me to expect a sort of 1980s Bunny: set (at first) on a college campus, it centres on a trio of poetry-and-suicide-obsessed friends known as the ‘death girls’, and follows what happens when one of them, Claire, is drawn into a new relationship with quixotic Julian, whose personality is the opposite of this morbid clique. But it soon drifts away from all this – into the life and death of Lucy Ascher, the young poet whom Claire idolises, and a separate plot which follows Claire as she impulsively decides to approach Helen and Ray Ascher (Lucy’s parents) and work as their housekeeper. Each of the major characters is, in some way, ‘sleepwalking’ through life: Lucy is depressed; the Aschers are grieving; Claire is a combination of both, mourning her brother Seth and only finding comfort in Lucy Ascher’s cold, doomy poetry. Despite all this darkness – or maybe deliberately, to balance it out – the story is gentle in such abundance that it starts to border on fantasy. A whimsical and strange, yet also strangely likeable, blend of numbness and warmth.
September 3, 2015
I'm giving this book 5 stars, but that doesn't mean it's an amazing book. In fact, it's overwrought and dated. However, I love this book--mostly because I read it over and over again when I was 13 or so. It's one of those books that really spoke to me at that age, and so it gets 5 stars for nostalgia.
I thought being a "death girl" (sort of a pre-Goth; this book was published in 1982) and staying up all night in college, reading poetry around a candle, would be so cool. Claire, the protagonist, seemed so edgy to me when I was young. She wore black! She had older lovers! She devoured poetry! She wore perfume! She went to a small, elite college! Her male love interest wore clogs! :lol:
As an adult, the resolution of this book seems hurried and shallow. However, the first chapter (probably the one the author edited the most) is really well written.
I thought being a "death girl" (sort of a pre-Goth; this book was published in 1982) and staying up all night in college, reading poetry around a candle, would be so cool. Claire, the protagonist, seemed so edgy to me when I was young. She wore black! She had older lovers! She devoured poetry! She wore perfume! She went to a small, elite college! Her male love interest wore clogs! :lol:
As an adult, the resolution of this book seems hurried and shallow. However, the first chapter (probably the one the author edited the most) is really well written.
December 28, 2014
As Meg Wolitzer explains in an interesting new preface to this 2014 edition, Sleepwalking is her first novel, written while she was still an undergraduate at Brown. I have to admit that when I first started reading, the novelty of this was foremost in my mind, and I kept trying to decide if the book was genuinely good, or just good for someone who'd written it as an undergraduate. Ultimately the book became so interesting as to distract me from such thoughts entirely. The blurb for this novel is somewhat misleading; while it is about a college student (a "death girl") who's obsessed with a dead, Slyvia Plath-like poet, it's mainly about two older married couples who've both lost children and the differing ways they've dealt with it. The book taps into universal sentiments, impressive for an author so young at the time, and is impeccably written. You can see the influence of The Bell Jar (depressed college students, seaside locale) and, a bit, of The Group, but it's also amazing how much of Meg Wolitzer's own unique talent was already in place. My only complaints are that the book is a pretty grim affair, with next to no humor (I think there was the potential for a bit more), and the boyfriend character, Julian, despite playing a large role in the back-cover blurb, could have been excised from the book easily, with most of his catalyst role performed by one of the other "death girls." In fact, the book would have been more satisfying and unified that way. Still, I genuinely enjoyed this. I'll have to make time for The Interestings and Belzhar in 2015.
April 4, 2022
1.5 stars
I was really anticipating this novel because I thought I’d love it. The premise sounded like a perfect book for me: female poets, grief, academia. Unfortunately this was really disappointing.
I found the premise was the superficial curtain of the novel and nothing substantial lay behind. Everything it promised to examine was shallow and lacked meaningful depth. Especially the girls’ attachment to the female poets; I couldn’t feel the transformative influence that the poetry had over the girls.
I had mixed feelings towards the exploration of grief. While I thought the Ashers were empathetically depicted in their experience of loss, for most characters their grief lacked dimension. Their grief seemed to describe the behaviours involved rather than illustrate the entanglement of emotions that arise from it.
The novel felt aimless. There was no sense of direction and I didn’t have any emotional connections which would have engaged my interest. Unfortunately, this fell incredibly flat for me.
I was really anticipating this novel because I thought I’d love it. The premise sounded like a perfect book for me: female poets, grief, academia. Unfortunately this was really disappointing.
I found the premise was the superficial curtain of the novel and nothing substantial lay behind. Everything it promised to examine was shallow and lacked meaningful depth. Especially the girls’ attachment to the female poets; I couldn’t feel the transformative influence that the poetry had over the girls.
I had mixed feelings towards the exploration of grief. While I thought the Ashers were empathetically depicted in their experience of loss, for most characters their grief lacked dimension. Their grief seemed to describe the behaviours involved rather than illustrate the entanglement of emotions that arise from it.
The novel felt aimless. There was no sense of direction and I didn’t have any emotional connections which would have engaged my interest. Unfortunately, this fell incredibly flat for me.
November 29, 2021
dnf @ 40%
hitting the old age of twenty i am deeply uninterested in reading a book that is not only so terribly written but also makes me want to believe that “there’s a vas deferens between us” is an acceptable joke to crack DURING sex. meg wolitzer this should’ve stayed in the tumblr drafts of your amanda lovelace stan account.
hitting the old age of twenty i am deeply uninterested in reading a book that is not only so terribly written but also makes me want to believe that “there’s a vas deferens between us” is an acceptable joke to crack DURING sex. meg wolitzer this should’ve stayed in the tumblr drafts of your amanda lovelace stan account.
June 30, 2015
Sleepwalking was not what I expected, but nevertheless impossible to put down. Wolitzer does a remarkable job showing the different forms and functions of grief, and how profoundly the loss of loved ones (literally or metaphorically) can change a person's outlook and approach to life. But she avoids the trap of being sentimental--Sleepwalking tells it like it is, and is all the more poignant for its refusal to slip into melodrama.
September 24, 2012
eh... I just couldn't get into it. It wasn't terrible, just really dragged me along and the three girls relationship just seemed juvenile for college aged young women.
October 16, 2022
Dont know what rating to give it
Edit: it was ok, i guess
Edit: it was ok, i guess
February 18, 2022
This book is highly explicit in its depiction of self-harm and suicide, yet it is not romanticized. The Death Girls do so at first, but this alters over time. While the wording is poetic and beautiful, it does not depict the issues in the same way. It makes the small, everyday and boring things beautiful, and it also makes recovery and moving on beautiful, which is so unusual in YA and NA books. The cast of characters is rather limited and centered on families; it is not particularly diversified. The Danziger family is Jewish, and it's well incorporated into the book. The portrayal of people of various ages was something I particularly liked – from childhood to middle age, they all appeared real and vibrant, and the middle-aged characters weren't written with scorn, as they sometimes are in works centered on young adults. Their anguish and recuperation are taken as seriously as Lucy's and Claire's.
June 22, 2020
Kat/paperbackdreams (one of my favourite booktubers) described this as a cross between everything I never told you by celeste ng and dead poet's society so I had to stop everything else and pick up this book but it turned out to be a huge disappointment.
July 8, 2020
I was suckered in by this being described as a dark academia and akin to Dead Poet's Society (and the pretty cover) but am left feeling very empty and disappointed.
I think this is being marketed all wrong; it really doesn't focus much on the "death-girls" at all. It is more a book about parents struggling to deal with grief and everyone being sad and having undiagnosed depression. I read it eagerly looking forward to a tale revolving around three women grappling with identity and university, but instead I got this half-baked toxic "romance", a detailed description of suicide, utter lack of character depth, and excessive descriptions of parenthood. This book makes you SAD but doesn't give you the proper depth as to why it is sad.
The one positive note I will give this novel is the writing. It was pretty, and also impressive given it being a debut novel written early on in Wolitzer's life.
I think this is being marketed all wrong; it really doesn't focus much on the "death-girls" at all. It is more a book about parents struggling to deal with grief and everyone being sad and having undiagnosed depression. I read it eagerly looking forward to a tale revolving around three women grappling with identity and university, but instead I got this half-baked toxic "romance", a detailed description of suicide, utter lack of character depth, and excessive descriptions of parenthood. This book makes you SAD but doesn't give you the proper depth as to why it is sad.
The one positive note I will give this novel is the writing. It was pretty, and also impressive given it being a debut novel written early on in Wolitzer's life.
January 13, 2021
I know this is a very personal and subjective rating: I believe that only if you feel a certain degree of relatability will you appreciate and get caught in this book. If you don’t find yourself in a similar mental space, or if you can’t relate with characters/situations/thoughts, there’ll be very little for you to hold on to, and the entire thing will simply go over your head because the story/plot itself isn’t the real backbone of the book. I found a big piece of myself in Wolitzer’s words like never before; I felt understood, seen and cared for, rarely has a book impacted this much. There’s so much I took from this story, even though I can’t exactly pinpoint what nor put into words. On a more quantifiable level, though, the writing was impeccable, beautiful, moving and particularly evocative (her use of images and metaphors was simply masterful). Needless to say, Wolitzer’s has swept me off my feet with this striking debut.
May 25, 2018
Meg Wolitzer writes darkly and with precision, communicating themes subtly yet powerfully. The three characters followed in Sleepwalking are similar and distinct -- their stories are told almost interchangeably, but with intricate detail. I thoroughly enjoyed the attention paid to language in this novel, as well as the intuitive manner through which its characters came to life in my mind. I'd recommend this read particularly for those who enjoyed Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng.
November 7, 2023
Si hubiera leído esta novela en mi adolescencia se habría convertido en mi personalidad entera. Tres chicas conocidas como las "dead girls" en su universidad porque se visten de negro, son taciturnas, leen a la luz de las velas y cada una de ellas está obsesionada con una autora distinta (Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton y la ficticia Lucy Asher). Esa premisa es maravillosa, la cosa es que la novela se desvía a enfocarse solamente en Claire quien está obsesionada con Lucy Asher y acaba siendo una historia de "coming of age" en la que Claire exorciza los demonios de la pérdida de su hermano al tiempo que ayuda a otros personajes a procesar el suicidio de Lucy. Wolitzer escribió esta novela con tan sólo 23 años y ahora tengo que leer más de ella porque si esta fue su novela debut no puedo esperar a descubrir su evolución como escritora.
February 14, 2016
2.5 stars. Super overwrought and reads like a book of long winded metaphors, but homegirl wrote this in college so I've got to give her props.
July 22, 2020
a heartwarming and poetic novel about death, grief, and finding solace in words. when pursuing an undeniable obsession is the only way to reconnect with your own feelings and pain
July 3, 2021
you really do get a kick out of this when u had a tumblr in 2013
May 7, 2021
This took me so long to get into (and finish). I usually love Wolitzer's work but this just failed to "go" anywhere. Wolitzer's writing was the only thing that kept me reading as, at the ridiculously young age of 23, her writing is already poetic in her debut novel. Maybe I missed the point of the book but I felt like it was just a 244 ramble about relationships (something I usually enjoy) that simply failed to coalesce into something concrete.
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February 4, 2022“Until there is no longer the possibility of sadness, of isolation, there can be no gravity. We all float by, rootless, taking clumsy astronaut steps and calling it progress.”
May 22, 2023
not what i was expecting!!!! but it was okay!!!!!
December 6, 2024
2020: i adore meg wolitzer’s writing, and the process of reading sleepwalking was utterly entrancing. i also loved that we got to see multiple perspectives beyond claire’s. this is a book that i want to reread so that i can soak in the details and connect the beginning to the end. it’s not what i expected it to be; i expected secret history level pretentiousness (which i love,,but there’s a time and place) but what i got was a quietly self-aware, conscientious story, sensitive in its portrayal of death.
May 24, 2015
3.5/5
I don't really know how to feel about this book. The topic intrigued me at first and the fact that meg wolitzer wrote it while she was a student at brown, but I think that really shows in her writing. A lot of the dialogue was very wooden and some of the plot points were very unrealistic, but I also feel like the character development is saying something very important and relevant. It'll be interesting to read her newer works and see how her writing style has changed and developed.
I don't really know how to feel about this book. The topic intrigued me at first and the fact that meg wolitzer wrote it while she was a student at brown, but I think that really shows in her writing. A lot of the dialogue was very wooden and some of the plot points were very unrealistic, but I also feel like the character development is saying something very important and relevant. It'll be interesting to read her newer works and see how her writing style has changed and developed.
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