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frasersimons 's review for:
Sleepwalking
by Meg Wolitzer
https://medium.com/springboard-thought/sleepwalking-sometimes-the-cure-is-as-anomalous-as-the-affliction-835c8b8e3cc2
“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.”
The ‘death girls’ of Swarthmore are a notorious trio of women on the Swarthmore campus. They are utterly consumed with the work of particular poets. They dress in black, hold seance-like rituals where they read from Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and a fictional poet: Lucy Asher.
They each go so far as to take steps to look like their chosen poet.
But unlike her friends, ostensibly, Claire Danziger has experienced the loss of her younger brother and that loss has molded her in ways she hasn’t yet unpacked. As she falls headlong into a relationship with Julien, she starts to question her death girl identity, distancing herself from her friends, though she has considered it vital to her being — until now.
“She had seen that look on the faces of lovers in restaurants, on the secret: a secret, meaningful glance exchanged between two people. There seemed to be a conspiracy of passion in the world.”
This internal schism only gets worse and Julien, though well-meaning, doesn’t have the tools to help Claire.
When her friend suggests a restorative cure she had tried herself when away from her friends, where she, for a short time, abandoned her life to connect with her poet by trying to encroach, however slightly, into the real life of her chosen poet, Claire, desperate to try anything, goes to the house where Lucy Asher’s parents live.
Amazingly, seeing something of their daughter in Claire, the pair hire her as a cleaner, and the new trio proceeds to reflect on their grief via the interactions with one another. These can be on a subtle, micro-scale; observing the ways in which each is different from the people in their own lives with the same roll: wife, father, mother, daughter, etc.
“It was too easy. Letting go also meant other things, things people never discussed. There were restrictions; everything always had to be cathartic these days.”
Undoubtedly, it’s a strange concept for a book, but it ends up working.
While dwelling in the Ashers' grief, Claire seems able to achieve a kind of catharsis in that environment, where she is simply accepted by a family, in contrast to her own, which are described as having been ‘hardened’ by the death of their child. In a symbiotic way, the parents, too, being to process their grief — something which neither party realizes they were unable to do previously, and why they were shades of their former selves.
Sleepwalking is about empathy.
“It did not make Helen feel worse, though, as she had thought it might. It occupied her; it gave her a project to work on. She and Ray had shared almost nothing in years. Grief didn’t count, because in a way it was nothing; there wasn’t anything in it to hold on to, just wide-open empty space.”
Even when the actual actions of the characters are opaque, the description of what a character is feeling in regards to the action manages to resonate and inform the scene.
Sometimes what a person needs in order to fully realize the complexities of internalized trauma and grief, is just not something the majority of people around us provide — unintentionally stymying whatever it is a person needs to move on, and grow.
I imagine most people are familiar with the feeling of being inadequate to the task of giving what a person needs in situations regarding grief and loss. But framing it is as something as odd as this while contrasting it with the easy acceptance between Claire and the parents, ushers this notion into a more realized, more complete perspective.
It is more compelling for people who can remember what it’s like to be young and to think there is no one else who could feel like you do. Or to be in that place yourself. Surely everyone has felt that their pain or fear or terror or sadness is keener than anyone else; that your cup runneth over. And nobody could possibly understand.
Sleepwalking’s concept, then, becomes no more peculiar than the impenetrable nature of a person’s subjective inner workings. Why should it be so wild that the cure is any less atypical?
“Without company, misery turns to sorrow, and sorrow turns inward, curling up in some dark, damp corner.”
“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.”
The ‘death girls’ of Swarthmore are a notorious trio of women on the Swarthmore campus. They are utterly consumed with the work of particular poets. They dress in black, hold seance-like rituals where they read from Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and a fictional poet: Lucy Asher.
They each go so far as to take steps to look like their chosen poet.
But unlike her friends, ostensibly, Claire Danziger has experienced the loss of her younger brother and that loss has molded her in ways she hasn’t yet unpacked. As she falls headlong into a relationship with Julien, she starts to question her death girl identity, distancing herself from her friends, though she has considered it vital to her being — until now.
“She had seen that look on the faces of lovers in restaurants, on the secret: a secret, meaningful glance exchanged between two people. There seemed to be a conspiracy of passion in the world.”
This internal schism only gets worse and Julien, though well-meaning, doesn’t have the tools to help Claire.
When her friend suggests a restorative cure she had tried herself when away from her friends, where she, for a short time, abandoned her life to connect with her poet by trying to encroach, however slightly, into the real life of her chosen poet, Claire, desperate to try anything, goes to the house where Lucy Asher’s parents live.
Amazingly, seeing something of their daughter in Claire, the pair hire her as a cleaner, and the new trio proceeds to reflect on their grief via the interactions with one another. These can be on a subtle, micro-scale; observing the ways in which each is different from the people in their own lives with the same roll: wife, father, mother, daughter, etc.
“It was too easy. Letting go also meant other things, things people never discussed. There were restrictions; everything always had to be cathartic these days.”
Undoubtedly, it’s a strange concept for a book, but it ends up working.
While dwelling in the Ashers' grief, Claire seems able to achieve a kind of catharsis in that environment, where she is simply accepted by a family, in contrast to her own, which are described as having been ‘hardened’ by the death of their child. In a symbiotic way, the parents, too, being to process their grief — something which neither party realizes they were unable to do previously, and why they were shades of their former selves.
Sleepwalking is about empathy.
“It did not make Helen feel worse, though, as she had thought it might. It occupied her; it gave her a project to work on. She and Ray had shared almost nothing in years. Grief didn’t count, because in a way it was nothing; there wasn’t anything in it to hold on to, just wide-open empty space.”
Even when the actual actions of the characters are opaque, the description of what a character is feeling in regards to the action manages to resonate and inform the scene.
Sometimes what a person needs in order to fully realize the complexities of internalized trauma and grief, is just not something the majority of people around us provide — unintentionally stymying whatever it is a person needs to move on, and grow.
I imagine most people are familiar with the feeling of being inadequate to the task of giving what a person needs in situations regarding grief and loss. But framing it is as something as odd as this while contrasting it with the easy acceptance between Claire and the parents, ushers this notion into a more realized, more complete perspective.
It is more compelling for people who can remember what it’s like to be young and to think there is no one else who could feel like you do. Or to be in that place yourself. Surely everyone has felt that their pain or fear or terror or sadness is keener than anyone else; that your cup runneth over. And nobody could possibly understand.
Sleepwalking’s concept, then, becomes no more peculiar than the impenetrable nature of a person’s subjective inner workings. Why should it be so wild that the cure is any less atypical?
“Without company, misery turns to sorrow, and sorrow turns inward, curling up in some dark, damp corner.”