Sleep - by Honor Jones (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously-the one she was born into, and the one she has made.

The surface of Margaret's childhood is one of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes until, late one summer, she wakes to a new kind of peril, and the simple pleasures of girlhood slip away. Twenty-five years later, Margaret is newly divorced, discovering the pleasures of a new lover, and navigating her life as a co-parent when she brings her daughters back to the house where she was raised. As the past encroaches on the present, Margaret reckons with questions about how much of our lives are our own and what it takes to keep a child safe.

Warm and generous, sexy and full of humor, Sleep is dazzling in its wisdom about the cycles of motherhood and childhood, the cost of secrets, and the burdens and gifts of love.

Review Quotes

"An exceptionally moving novel. Jones takes her cues from writers like John Cheever, Richard Yates and Virginia Woolf, all masters of the repressed and unsayable. She covers the same material -- the resentments and traumas that smolder in families wrapped in a suburban idyll -- and with similar delicacy and humor. But Sleep also introduces a measure of optimism and generosity I found refreshing."--The New York Times

"Hypnotic... Jones crafts a nuanced and powerful exploration of a woman's struggle to come to terms with her past... a masterpiece of carefully crafted perspective and tone...Margaret's plight may feel tragic, but it's transformed by sheer force of will -- and Jones's tempered prose -- into something heroic, even hopeful."--The Washington Post

"Is it possible to have a childhood that is both picture-perfect and perfectly awful? And if so, how much of the baggage will you end up carrying 20-plus years later when you have children of your own? Honor Jones explores these questions in a quietly, profoundly beautiful new novel titled Sleep." --NPR

"Jones's prose is spare but effervescent, her evocation of childhood is pitch-perfect, and she handles delicate subject matters in adroit and surprising ways." --Elle

"A haunting and beautiful novel about a desperate attempt to live in the present despite the tidal pull of the past...Incredibly moving." --Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake

"SLEEP marks the arrival of an astonishing new voice in the world of literary fiction. Honor Jones writes with honesty and courage about life's complications and contradictions. This novel is propulsive and funny and heartbreaking." --J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs

"Heartbreaking, sexy, and full of humor . . . With elegant language and profound insight, Honor Jones transforms a story of family secrets into something utterly fresh, original, and exhilarating." --Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Anita De Monte Laughs Last

"A magnetic, breathtaking novel. I could not put it down and will be recommending it to everyone I know."-- Cherie Jones, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

"Beautiful, bruising, incisive and heartfelt. Sleep takes a moving, maddening, funny and searing look at childhood, family and marriage. I adored it." -- Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling ­author of All the Colors of the Dark