DREAMS OF SLEEP

by Josephine Humphreys ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1984

The lives of a chain of unhappy loners in Charleston, So. Carolina--flecked with prickly perceptions about the disorientation and loneliness of marriage. Alice is 33, a former math scholar now married to ob/gyn Dr. Will Reese, the mother of two small girls; and though she once had hoped that the ""world's rules"" might strengthen her timid link to the ""real world,"" every event since Alice's marriage ""had turned opaque and medieval. . . and mysterious."" Will is having an unjelled affair with his sad receptionist Claire--but Alice's jealousy has turned, oddly, simply to curiosity. Furthermore, Alice's children are afraid of her. (She ""ruins things."") And then Will's mother Marcella--who shucked a drab widowhood to marry a destroy-all developer--suggests that Alice hire a part-time babysitter: 17-year-old Iris, who's in the process of triumphantly constructing a life away from her helpless, deserted mother. (She has a job, school, plus the self-structured task of caring for three destitute old men.) All these lives, then, plus a few others, will overlap and influence each other. Alice dreams of the ""ease"" of sleep, the sweetness of solitude. Will begins to falter in his work, joining an old friend (victim of an agonizing divorce) in symbolically playing out ""an old ritual of old men. . . for the sake of what used to be."" Alice, Will, and Iris will change their perceptions of themselves, their destinies, and parents living and dead. And finally Iris learns to teach love--while Will and Alice reach the humble recognition that ""for us love is not a natural state,"" but they'll ""begin their spin"" . . . together. The dank, cloudy depressions of Humphrey's lonely ones are complemented by a quietly sagging and pillaged Charleston; and though the slow-pulse pace is a bit heavy for some of the night flights and slippery voyeurisms that take place, this is a rasping and distinctive first novel.

Pub Date: May 1, 1984

ISBN: 0140077871

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION