Part drama, part mystery, even part romance, The Sleepwalker touches a bit on multiple genres, all of which I love, and which may explain why I finished it in a day.
Lianna is the narrator taking us through the disappearance of her mother, but she’s not the only one telling this story. There’s another voice, a more ominous one, telling us what its like to be a sleepwalker. Though short and somewhat vague, this voice offers a chilling glimpse into the mind of someone that wakes up with physical and emotional scars they have no memory of receiving, or inflicting. What did they do? What did they say? Who did they hurt? Can they be forgiven? Do they want to be?
Lianna has always known her mother, Annalee, was a sleepwalker, but it wasn’t until her disappearance that she learned more about the condition, and her mother’s specific case. As someone with no experience with sleepwalking I found this fascinating. I thought the extent of sleepwalking was roaming around your house in a daze, maybe eating a snack or moving something to a spot it doesn’t usually go. I had no idea the extent to which people could operate while fully asleep, and its pretty mind boggling to think about. But I imagine if this condition plagues you or a loved one, you wouldn’t use fascinating to describe it. You’d probably choose isolating. Or debilitating. Maybe even deadly.
Sleepwalking seems to be the root of Analee’s disappearance, but the mystery into what happened is not one I got any closer to solving as I read further, a sign of a great story. I teetered back and forth between who was telling the truth, who was telling a partial truth and who was lying. I questioned everyone’s motives and whether they could be trusted. I questioned the cryptic messages from the sleepwalker; who was it? What were they trying to tell me? But while I loved the mystery I couldn’t really identify with it.
I could identify with the notion of what it means to love. Not just romantic love, but love. Every character in this book has some type of flaw. Lying. Keeping secrets. Distrust. Even sleepwalking. Often times the flaws were a result of good intentions, like trying to protect someone from emotional distress, but its hard to overlook bad deeds even when they are executed with the best of intentions. Yet these characters were able to look past the surface flaws to see the good in one another. They didn’t stop loving each other, which would have been the easy way out. It takes strength to really trust people, to believe in them. To love them. And because I admire that type of strength I admire these characters.
Michele Lenard 