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House of Sleep, The

By Jonathan Coe

(242)

| Hardcover | 9780375400933

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Book Description

A dream of a novel."
--Erica Wagner, The Times (London)

Following The Winshaw Legacy--Coe's ecstatically reviewed American debut, winner of the John Lewellyn Rhys Prize in England and France's coveted Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger--comes this beguiling, eccentric entertainment.
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A dream of a novel."
--Erica Wagner, The Times (London)

Following The Winshaw Legacy--Coe's ecstatically reviewed American debut, winner of the John Lewellyn Rhys Prize in England and France's coveted Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger--comes this beguiling, eccentric entertainment.
        Ashdown--a vast clifftop manor on the English coast--was once a university residence, where a group of students met briefly before going their separate ways. Twelve years later, it has been transformed into a clinic for sleep disorders, and a series of strange coincidences and ostensible synchronicities draws the same group of people together once again, each of them in different ways plagued by sleep.
        Sarah is narcoleptic, and her inability to distinguish between dreams and waking reality gives rise to a great many misunderstandings--one of which is to change Robert's life forever, as he persists for years (and then some) in his attempt to win her love. For Terry, a disillusioned film critic whose career has been derailed by Sarah's affliction, sleep is merely a memory, for his insomnia is complete and he can only yearn for the tantalizing dreams he enjoyed in youth. And for the increasingly deranged Dr. Dudden, who has made the subject the focus of his medical practice, sleep is nothing less than a global disease.
        With panache worthy of Nabokov, and with the heart to match his sophistication, Jonathan Coe has written a breathtakingly original comedy about the powers we acquire--and those we relinquish--when we fall asleep, or fall in love.

"This is a remarkable book, most impressive for its subtle narrative patterning, like a dapple of light and shade, allowing us to indulge the illusion of understanding its characters, until, all at once, the darkness, the isolation and the mystery return. Perhaps most strange of all, for a novel about insomniacs, The House of Sleep is a wonderful bedtime read."
--David Nokes, Sunday Times

9 Reviews

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  • 1 person find this helpful

    "Robert thought to himself: this must be what it is like, to have a family. A wife and a child. This ceaseless admixture of anxiety and trust."

    "For once, on the train, she took no notice of the advertisements, declined to read the back pages of other people's newspapers, and instead looked cl ... (continue)

    "Robert thought to himself: this must be what it is like, to have a family. A wife and a child. This ceaseless admixture of anxiety and trust."

    "For once, on the train, she took no notice of the advertisements, declined to read the back pages of other people's newspapers, and instead looked closely, for the first time, at the faces of her fellow passengers. She saw happy couples, and unhappy couples; couples who had nothing to say to one another, and couples who could not keep their hands to themselves; couples who had just met, and couples who seemed to be on the verge of splitting up. She saw married men on their way home to their wives, and she saw singles men on their way home to their videos and microwave dinners. She saw women on their own, women in pairs, and women in groups, and she thought to herself: Yes, I can take my place with these people. Whatever else has gone wrong, whatever other mistakes I may have made, I know who I am, now. I know who I am, and it suits me."

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    Control Freak said on May 10, 2009 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    Good neatly woven story

    Enjoyed the multiple narratives of the characters, switching back and forth through time. Can see that this book sets the pattern for his later books.

    More darkly humourous than the later books

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    Mearso said on Aug 4, 2008 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • *** This comment contains spoilers! ***

    "That's the infallible sign of true affection: no opposition between interior solitude and friendship"

    "When you lose somebody, when you miss them, you suffer because the departed person has become something imaginary; something unreal. But your desire for them isn't imaginary. So that's what you h ... (continue)

    "That's the infallible sign of true affection: no opposition between interior solitude and friendship"

    "When you lose somebody, when you miss them, you suffer because the departed person has become something imaginary; something unreal. But your desire for them isn't imaginary. So that's what you have to fasten on: the desire. Because it's real."

    "I have only one thing to say to you, Sarah, and I am going to say it now, as quickly and as kindly as possible, in order to spare you pain. Your behaviour tonight has confirmed a suspicion which has been growing in my mind for some time: a suspicion that you are - no put too fine a point on it - far from suitable as a partner with whom I would feel comfortable sharing the rest of my life. Consequently I feel obliged to inform you that our relationship is at the end, as of this precise moment. Since it is now too late for me reasonably to expect you to make alternative arrangements, I will permit you to share a bed with me for this night and this night only. My position on this issue is not open to negotiation and now that I have made it clear, I would only like to remind you that I have a long car journey tomorrow, and I expect that you will allow me, on that account if no other, an interrupted´s sleep".

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    petite marchande de prose said on Jul 10, 2011 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • Make a wish and maybe someone will try to make your dreams come true. The thin line between dreams and reality.

    It’s so bloody difficult to write something about a book, which is definitely going to take an important place among my favourites on my bookshelf!
    So many emotions and thoughts tangle up in my head and stomach and I’d love to pass them on to you, who are probably reading these lines now. How to con ... (continue)

    It’s so bloody difficult to write something about a book, which is definitely going to take an important place among my favourites on my bookshelf!
    So many emotions and thoughts tangle up in my head and stomach and I’d love to pass them on to you, who are probably reading these lines now. How to convince you of reading this book, how to spread the word, to inflame the same passion I’m feeling? And it’s so bloody difficult!
    A summary perhaps? Shallow somehow, but anyway…
    This is a book, in which “the odd-numbered chapters are set mainly in the years 1983-84 and the even-numbered chapters are set in the last two weeks of June, 1996”. There’s this student house in Ashdown.
    Sarah’s narcoleptic. She doesn’t know yet. She falls asleep during the day without notice and the worst is that she dreams. She dreams of events taking place in her fantasy and when she wakes up the dream has become her reality. Of course this causes quite a lot of misunderstanding and chaos. Robert is in love. He fell in love with Sarah almost instantly, but he doesn’t stand a chance. She used to have a boyfriend, Gregory, quite a disturbed man he was. He used to watch her sleep and play a strange game with her eyes. But that’s not the reason he doesn’t stand a chance. She’s seeing someone else, Victoria aka Ronnie. It’s hard for a man to compete with the female partner of the woman he loves. And then there’s Terry, a fellow student who sleeps even fourteen hours through.
    Apparently “ordinary”, apparently “peculiar” students sharing a house, being friends, falling in and out of love.
    The years go by.
    There’s this “sleep clinic” in Ashdown.
    Gregory is the director. Still a quite disturbed man. He thinks sleep is a waste of time, a life-shortening disease. He loathes this woman (probably not the only woman he loathes), Cleo, a colleague, who befriends the patients trying to help them instead of treating them like test animals. Sarah’s in London, a divorced narcoleptic teacher. Robert has disappeared without a trace. Terry developed the strange habit of sleeping no more than a couple of hours per night. He lost his job due to someone else’s “sleep disorder” and is still obsessed with films. Victoria… is the past living in the present. “All these people are drawn back together by a series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep – and each other…”(from the book cover).
    I failed. I reread the lines I’ve just written and I feel I really couldn’t transmit the fascination, the bewitching effect of this book, not to mention the eagerness to finish it, the delight in reading page after page and the stunning feeling after the last word. The strange sensation of loss and sorrow because this story is already over.

    “He would in the purest possible sense, make her dreams come true. Wasn’t that the most that any lover could offer?”

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    Katia Guido said on Nov 13, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Intricate, moving AND fun? I've got to be dreaming

    It would be quite hard to find a defect in this extremely well-written, moving, and rightly praised novel (the slightly exaggerated Dr. Dudden's final pages being probably the closest you could get). While following the main characters - linked by their relations with sleep and with Ashdown, a resid ... (continue)

    It would be quite hard to find a defect in this extremely well-written, moving, and rightly praised novel (the slightly exaggerated Dr. Dudden's final pages being probably the closest you could get). While following the main characters - linked by their relations with sleep and with Ashdown, a residence where they all have lived - Mr. Coe makes us jump as seamlessly as possible from the present time to the past, and from a character to another, creating a wonderfully intricate story that owes more to lucid dreaming than to reality (so that even the aforementioned grotesque Dudden crisis seems more acceptable). Plus: it's funny. Go read it already.

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    Aioros said on Jul 20, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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