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Sleep is a moving debut about motherhood, identity, and the reclaiming of oneself after trauma. Margaret’s childhood looked idyllic from the outside as she and her brother were raised in a two-parent household in suburban New Jersey. But danger is always lurking in her periphery as she is continually assaulted by a family member (check the trigger warnings for this one), and Margaret's mother, Elizabeth, constantly teetering on the edge of a breakdown, is ready to blame her daughter for anything that goes wrong. Even (often) when Margaret has nothing to do with it—subliminally teaching Margaret that she MUST be inherently bad because her own Mother is so ready to believe that she is.
Flash forward a couple of decades, and Margaret is struggling to keep her head above water—a constant theme that is so beautifully illustrated on the book’s cover. She’s the mother of two young daughters in a cramped Brooklyn apartment, politely co-parenting with her ex-husband, Ezra. Margaret is constantly dealing with and answering to others, but her relationship with herself was what interested me. She’s full of contradictions—standing up for herself when it feels beside the point while backing down when it matters—and is understandably guarded after being taught to suppress herself for so many years (first by her mother, then (though to a lesser or at least less obvious way) by her husband) that it’s a wonder she doesn’t just spontaneously combust.
While the novel deals with such an intense subject matter, it punctuates the tension with poignant and often funny observations that keep the plot moving. I can’t say I fully connected with Margaret as a character—at first, I thought it was because I’m not a mother, but I don’t think that was it—but what I did connect with (& think lots of women, maybe especially mothers of daughters, will) was her constant anxiety, pain, and anger which were gorgeously rendered on every page.