Sleep

by Catherine Cole

In a small London café, teenager Ruth, and elderly French artist, Harry, recognise something profound in each other. They strike up a conversation that leads to regular meetings and takes them on a journey through their memories of traumatic times. Harry has much to tell about his childhood beside the Canal St Martin in Paris. Ruth has stories about her mother’s childhood in the Yorkshire Dales and London. How much has the stain of tragedy charged these memories and what use can be made of the pain? Looking back on her years with Harry, Ruth sees how shared memories – ecstatic or painful – can reshape the ways we value our lives and the lives of others.

Genres: Fiction

264 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2019

Reviews

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book begins with an epigraph from Virginia Woolf, The Waves:

'I meant to write about death, but life came flooding in.'

This book is about Ruth whose life is reeling after the suicide of her mother. This book is a collection of short chapters that move through time and place, leaving strokes on a canvas that is fully realised at the end.

Ruth is in a funk, she almost reads like a shadow or an outline. She is obsessed with the doctor whose sleep therapy she blames for her mother's untimely death. During this time she develops a friendship with Harry, an older French man, who is an artist (nothing cliche about that;), she meets at a cafe.

'It was adolescent neediness - rage, I now know - that lead me to recklessly deliver my past to a complete stranger at a cafe, to Harry. 'Strangers are dangerous,' Dave was always saying when Antoinette and I were growing up, though Monica usually replied, 'and so are the people with whom you should feel safe.'
I suppose my volubility was a response to Harry's keenness to talk too. My stories about Monica prompted him to tell his own stories.'

The relationship between Ruth and Harry is mentor and muse like in nature and doesn't verge on creepy (except for the part where he painted her before he met her). Ruth's disassociation to life, can read indulgently at times. But this is the truth with this type of crippling grief, it does displace your equilibrium and those closest to you can't always reach you. You are in a world of your own pain, looking back, forward, inside and out to make sense of the insensible. This book captures these complicated feelings brilliantly and I believe it is a story that will stay with me.

''Anything can be tolerated if you can make art out of it,' Harry use to say. 'Cherchez la femme.'
I'd answer, 'I am searching' aware as I returned Harry's steady gaze that my face displayed all too clearly the fear of being swept back to my mother again.'

[Donnawaters · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet, beautifully written reflection on loss, trauma and the role artistic endeavours, stories shared and connection has on resilience and hope.

[Gavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautifully written rumination on depression, but (not surprisingly) quite bleak. Very short chapters filled with anecdotes that nicely round out the main characters.

[Allegra Sandys-Wellington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliantly crafted novel written in the most exquisite lyrical and poetic prose. Cole draws us immediately into the world of her characters, we live with them as they traverse the complexity of their experiences. The author has a remarkable ability to generate the essential ambience of the various locations in which the novel is set. London feels exactly like London and so it is for Paris and the broad expanse of the county of Yorkshire. This really is an outstanding contribution to contemporary literature.

[Peter Helman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best Australian book I’ve read so far this year. It feels odd saying that given the book’s setting in London and Paris and the Yorkshire dales. The author really understand memory and how it works and what happens when the destructive impact of memory keeps drawing you back to a past that perhaps should be left alone. The title refers to how much of life we sleep away, focussing on things we can’t change whereas things we need to change - mental health, the rise of fascism, homelessness and refuge, are dismissed or sleepwalked through. A beautify, poetic reflection. Loved it.

[Lynn Berger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Sleep after the review in last weekend’s Australian. It is wonderful. I recommend it to anyone who wants a book that is beautifully written, insightful and very contemporary, despite some of the historical themes.

[Elodie Duchamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is wonderful. Merci.