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Sleep is Now a Foreign Country: Encounters with the Uncanny
ONE OF CBC BOOKS CANADIAN NONFICTION TO READ IN THE FALL
A poet recounts his experience with madness and explores the relationship between apprehension and imagination. In the summer of 1977, standing on a roadside somewhere between Dachau and Munich, twenty-two-year-old Mike Barnes experienced the dawning of the psychic break he’d been anticipating almost all his life. “Times over the years when I have tried to describe what followed,” he writes of that moment, “it has always come out wrong.” In this finely wrought, deeply intelligent memoir of madness, its antecedents and its aftermath, Barnes reconstructs instead what led him to that moment and offers with his characteristic generosity and candor the captivating account of a mind restlessly aware of itself.
A poet recounts his experience with madness and explores the relationship between apprehension and imagination. In the summer of 1977, standing on a roadside somewhere between Dachau and Munich, twenty-two-year-old Mike Barnes experienced the dawning of the psychic break he’d been anticipating almost all his life. “Times over the years when I have tried to describe what followed,” he writes of that moment, “it has always come out wrong.” In this finely wrought, deeply intelligent memoir of madness, its antecedents and its aftermath, Barnes reconstructs instead what led him to that moment and offers with his characteristic generosity and candor the captivating account of a mind restlessly aware of itself.
- GenresNonfictionMental Health
77 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 14, 2023
2 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Mike Barnes
33 books5 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 5, 2025
DNF.
Read half of it and got bored.
Read half of it and got bored.
April 21, 2025
A beautifully-phrase memoir of struggling with psychosis: the manic energy, the memory gaps, hints of a life peeking through from early school memories to a blurred university career, Germany and walking through The Gate, institutions, a life after that somehow goes on.
Barnes is primarily a poet, and the sensibility song through a lot of the lovely phrasing. There is a loose chronology, but more as a series of vivid fragments, tales as if Barnes is trying to piece it together right in front of you.
The descriptions of losing yourself, of seeing things (The Gray Lady), are disturbing, but not searching for sympathy. Barnes communicates the thrill of almost understanding it all, a fierce defense of his mind from the medical community, from medication.
It's a unique book I finished in a day. You almost have to.
Barnes is primarily a poet, and the sensibility song through a lot of the lovely phrasing. There is a loose chronology, but more as a series of vivid fragments, tales as if Barnes is trying to piece it together right in front of you.
The descriptions of losing yourself, of seeing things (The Gray Lady), are disturbing, but not searching for sympathy. Barnes communicates the thrill of almost understanding it all, a fierce defense of his mind from the medical community, from medication.
It's a unique book I finished in a day. You almost have to.
April 14, 2025
Madness confusion rambling thoughts what can happen with no sleep. Just for your own clarity read the reviews of others…
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews