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Sleep Training
A sensation crept over her, she had the strange feeling that something, or someone was causing her son’s distress: a presence in the darkness…
Elin, Mark and baby Padarn move into their first house together – a house bought unusually cheap – as Mark relocates them in order to start a new job. Lonely and trapped in an increasingly volatile and disquieting marriage, Elin’s world begins to unravel in self-doubt and paranoia: is something else visiting her baby at night, keeping him awake? Soon, a series of terrible secrets crawl out from between the cracks.
An unsettling contemporary ghost story by the winner of the Ghastling Novella Prize, this is an extremely tense and haunting tale that promises to have the reader riveted and turning the pages to the very end.
***
'Deep, visceral terror resides within this story. Gramich accumulates unnerving detail to build to an horrific climax. A deeply unsettling and innovative update on the classic ghost story.'
— Lucie McKnight Hardy
'Set against the claustrophobic backdrop of the pandemic, Sleep Training is an unsettling mediation on new motherhood, perception, and selfhood. It is at once frightening and thoughtful, eerie and compelling, and leaves the reader questioning who and what can be trusted.'
— Rebecca F. John
'From this novella’s opening scene of exhaustion tainting the young parents’ arrival at their new home, there’s a creeping sense of wrongness that could just be dismissed as sleep deprivation or paranoia. The final horrors ‒ no longer inside the mind, now inside the room ‒ cut the reader as sharply as a wielded knife.'
— Carly Holmes
Elin, Mark and baby Padarn move into their first house together – a house bought unusually cheap – as Mark relocates them in order to start a new job. Lonely and trapped in an increasingly volatile and disquieting marriage, Elin’s world begins to unravel in self-doubt and paranoia: is something else visiting her baby at night, keeping him awake? Soon, a series of terrible secrets crawl out from between the cracks.
An unsettling contemporary ghost story by the winner of the Ghastling Novella Prize, this is an extremely tense and haunting tale that promises to have the reader riveted and turning the pages to the very end.
***
'Deep, visceral terror resides within this story. Gramich accumulates unnerving detail to build to an horrific climax. A deeply unsettling and innovative update on the classic ghost story.'
— Lucie McKnight Hardy
'Set against the claustrophobic backdrop of the pandemic, Sleep Training is an unsettling mediation on new motherhood, perception, and selfhood. It is at once frightening and thoughtful, eerie and compelling, and leaves the reader questioning who and what can be trusted.'
— Rebecca F. John
'From this novella’s opening scene of exhaustion tainting the young parents’ arrival at their new home, there’s a creeping sense of wrongness that could just be dismissed as sleep deprivation or paranoia. The final horrors ‒ no longer inside the mind, now inside the room ‒ cut the reader as sharply as a wielded knife.'
— Carly Holmes
- GenresFiction
72 pages, Paperback
Published November 4, 2021
133 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 18, 2021
A truly captivating and terrifying read. Very topical given that it's a modern tale of a new mother struggling with her mental health during COVID times. Yet, what gave the book so much weight in my opinion was its honest and upfront depiction of postpartum depression, gaslighting and domestic abuse, all through the eyes of a protagonist that we grow to love, but also fear. The gripping horror aspects really tie everything together into a horrific yet read that I couldn't bear to put down.
January 11, 2024
Well, this was really good! Great writing, interesting setting, nice, believable dialogue. The character of the mother was the most anxious character I've met in recent memory: I started to feel for her very early on, though I can't vouch for her being realistically portrayed since I've never been a parent myself. The story is told from her point of view, which is a great choice: there's a claustrophobic atmosphere by default, and the pacing is defined by her (quite compelling) reactions.
A sad and lonely horror tale! I devoured it the day I got it, I was not able to put it down.
A sad and lonely horror tale! I devoured it the day I got it, I was not able to put it down.
January 28, 2022
This book arrived on my doormat this morning and I got through it in a few hours. Yes it’s a novella so it’s short but I have the attention span of a toddler so it was the quality of the writing that got me through so quickly.
The book taps into the claustrophobic feelings many of us have had over the past few years of Covid and touches nicely on the fears of parenthood and mental health issues surrounding the same along with the relationship strains caused by working from home and deceit. I would highly recommend and will be looking out for more by this author.
The book taps into the claustrophobic feelings many of us have had over the past few years of Covid and touches nicely on the fears of parenthood and mental health issues surrounding the same along with the relationship strains caused by working from home and deceit. I would highly recommend and will be looking out for more by this author.
July 9, 2022
WOWOWOWOW
February 6, 2023
Very strange… very good, but very strange…
March 8, 2023
Well. That was certainly something. Definitely not for me; I'll be selling my copy.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews