A winning, irreverent debut novel about a family wrestling with its future and its past—for readers of J. Courtney Sullivan, Meg Wolitzer, Mona Simpson, and Jhumpa LahiriNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, BUSTLE, AND EMILY GOULD, THE MILLIONSWith depth, heart, and agility, debut novelist Mira Jacob takes us on a deftly plotted journey that ranges from … Jacob takes us on a deftly plotted journey that ranges from 1970s India to suburban 1980s New Mexico to Seattle during the dot.com boom. The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing is an epic, irreverent testimony to the bonds of love, the pull of hope, and the power of making peace with life’s uncertainties.
Celebrated brain surgeon Thomas Eapen has been sitting on his porch, talking to dead relatives. At least that is the story his wife, Kamala, prone to exaggeration, tells their daughter, Amina, a photographer living in Seattle.
Reluctantly Amina returns home and finds a situation that is far more complicated than her mother let on, with roots in a trip the family, including Amina’s rebellious brother Akhil, took to India twenty years earlier. Confronted by Thomas’s unwillingness to explain himself, strange looks from the hospital staff, and a series of puzzling items buried in her mother’s garden, Amina soon realizes that the only way she can help her father is by coming to terms with her family’s painful past. In doing so, she must reckon with the ghosts that haunt all of the Eapens.
Praise for The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing
“With wit and a rich understanding of human foibles, Jacob unspools a story that will touch your heart.”—People
“Optimistic, unpretentious and refreshingly witty.”—Associated Press
“By turns hilarious and tender and always attuned to shifts of emotion . . . [Jacob’s] characters shimmer with life.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A rich, engrossing debut told with lightness and care.”—The Kansas City Star
“[A] sprawling, poignant, often humorous novel . . . Told with humor and sympathy for its characters, the book serves as a bittersweet lesson in the binding power of family, even when we seek to break out from it.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Moving forward and back in time, Jacob balances comedy and romance with indelible sorrow. . . . When her plot springs surprises, she lets them happen just as they do in life: blindsidingly right in the middle of things.”—The Boston Globe
more
A hought-provoking exploration of the bonds of families and friends and the webs that unite our dreams, memories and perceptions of reality.
Good writing. How a family deals with sadness and love.
Much of it was engaging but it couldn’t decide if it was a coming of age story for a teenage girl or the ultimately triumphant tale of 2 generations of an immigrant family. It needs editing of the teenage years-lots of it- but I would still recommend it.
Wonderful piece of family fiction dealing with adolescence, assimilation, dysfunction and growing up.
And as Am returns home to see her family she realizes that all families have pasts and ghosts. Her family from India is still following the old ways yet aware of the changes and either dealing with them or in denial. For Thomas, the brain surgeon dad, he embraced leaving India and his brother and his unhappy mother behind. His wife Kam cooks the old way and wants to marry her daughter off to a good Indian family.
The title of sleepwalking is relevant. Am has a passion, her camera and she studies life and people through it until an event and then she just goes through the motions, sleepwalking through her job. Her Dad loves his surgery to the point he doesn’t “see” his family but at night he sees ghosts from insomnia. Ankil, her brother, is in love, in school and also in the habit of falling asleep anywhere. Then there is Thomas’s brother, Sunhil, that we meet briefly in India. Sunil is very unhappy but sweet until he sleep walks and commits violence. The acts of violence increase and hit the family hard in America.
You’ll want to protect Am as she alone in the family tries her best to keep everyone okay….but one person can’t alone start carrying the burdens from elementary school to adulthood. She reaches out to extended family and to close friends. The ghosts of the dead enter and leave bringing chaos as the past and the present collide.
You feel as if you walked by their house and peeked in the window and couldn’t keep away from looking in and trying to figure this family out. Their secrets from each other, the past and present at odds, the fighting and maybe cheating, the love hidden deep but coming through in times of crisis. It’s any family, any immigrant that comes here to start a new life, any family where work is more important or satisfying than family and more, much more.
It is not a book everyone will enjoy but if you love Alice Hoffman then you should read this. This is not a book where everything is tied up with happy ever after, rather a look at real life…the good, the bad, and the occasional ghost.
Loved it!
I couldn’t get into this book. The first part when a trip to India showed how abusive the Grandmother was, was well written. Then the plot just slowed down; the characters seemed shallow. Not my cup of tea.
This book is a very effective mix of family anger, love, commitment, and cultural conflict and assimilation.
I listened to the audio version of this book read by the author and it was outstanding. The family is fully brought to life and is struggling yet the story is told with humor in depth.
although it was difficult to get into the story because the writing skips around time frames, after I got into it I enjoyed it. There is a lot about the Indian cultures that is interesting and I am glad I read it!
I liked the family dynamics.