A review by definebookish
Sleepwalking by Meg Wolitzer

hopeful reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I thought Sleepwalking might be my second favourite kind of story, twisted and heavy with darkness. Actually it’s the one I love even more; a story of an unspoken need or longing fulfilled.

This is Meg Wolitzer’s debut, written while she was an undergraduate and published in 1982. Initially it reminded me of that meme that goes around about the eighties being closer to the sixties than they are to now – those early chapters feel noticeably more Bell Jar than, for example, My Year of R&R.

Eighteen-year-old Claire Danziger is a ‘death girl’, one of a trio who haunt the halls of their university campus dressed in black and immersed in the verses of their respective favourite female poet. Laura’s obsession is Anne Sexton, Naomi’s Sylvia Plath, and Claire’s the fictional Lucy Ascher, who – like Sexton and Plath – died by suicide some years earlier. But Claire is carrying another loss, and a relationship with an older student prompts her to take her obsession with Lucy to a new level.

This wasn’t what I expected at all, really. Or perhaps the first fifty pages were – I could sense teen me reading the opening chapters over my shoulder, drenched in patchouli and approving *very* much. But it’s a surprisingly mature book for an undergrad, contemplative and wise and understated.

I had anticipated more ‘death girl’ action, when in fact Naomi and Laura are secondary characters; this is very much Claire’s story. I didn’t anticipate it being so moving, or so hopeful. It is dark at times, but in a dreamy way rather than a morbid one. I felt lulled and a little spellbound by it.
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