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    The Sleepwalker: A Novel
    The Sleepwalker: A Novel
    The Sleepwalker: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Sleepwalker: A Novel

    Written by Chris Bohjalian

    Narrated by Cady McClain and Grace Experience

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest Room comes a spine-tingling novel of lies, loss, and buried desire—the mesmerizing story of a wife and mother who vanishes from her bed late one night.

    When Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, her children fear the worst. Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction manifests in ways both bizarre and devastating. Once, she merely destroyed the hydrangeas in front of her Vermont home. More terrifying was the night her older daughter, Lianna, pulled her back from the precipice of the Gale River bridge. The morning of Annalee's disappearance, a search party combs the nearby woods. Annalee's husband, Warren, flies home from a business trip. Lianna is questioned by a young, hazel-eyed detective. And her little sister, Paige, takes to swimming the Gale to look for clues. When the police discover a small swatch of fabric, a nightshirt, ripped and hanging from a tree branch, it seems certain Annalee is dead, but Gavin Rikert, the hazel-eyed detective, continues to call, continues to stop by the Ahlbergs' Victorian home. As Lianna peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Annalee's disappearance, she finds herself drawn to Gavin, but she must ask herself: Why does the detective know so much about her mother? Why did Annalee leave her bed only when her father was away? And if she really died while sleepwalking, where was the body?
         Conjuring the strange and mysterious world of parasomnia, a place somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, The Sleepwalker is a masterful novel from one of our most treasured storytellers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateJan 10, 2017
    ISBN9780553399646
    The Sleepwalker: A Novel
    Author

    Chris Bohjalian

    Chris Bohjalian is the author of twelve novels, including the New York Times bestsellers, Secrets of Eden, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and Midwives.  His work has been translated into twenty-six languages.  He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.   Visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com or www.facebook.com .

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    Reviews for The Sleepwalker

    4/5

    253 ratings40 reviews

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    • 4/5
      fiction (suspense/mystery - family secrets, human drama, psychology). a page turner, for sure.
    • 4/5
      Kind of disturbing. Kind of intriguing. Some good twists. Kept my interest and the ending was a bit surprising.
    • 4/5
      The author does his usual suspense-building domestic thriller thing, but here, his focus on a medical condition where insensitive and even brutal sexual behavior occurs during sleep seemed very silly and deliberately provocative in a "let's be naughty" way. I have generally enjoyed Bohjalian's earlier writing, especially Buffalo Soldier and Midwives, but can take or leave his recent subject matters, which seem as light and fluffy, take-it-or-leave-it, as Elin Hilderbrand.
    • 5/5
      Being a sleepwalker myself, I loved this book at the beginning and for most of the way through. The ending, though, was quite a letdown. All the clues about sleep sex and then?? And I never could quite figure out who wrote the diary that tantalizingly appeared after every chapter, except in the end it seemed to be her sister. Which doesn't make any sense.

      I've read several of his other books - loved Midwives and the Law of Similars, The Double Bind not so much. This, except for the ending, is also at the top.
    • 3/5
      Set in the fall of 2000 this novel tells the tale of the disappearance of Annalee Ahlberg who one night just got up and walked away. The thing is she was a sleepwalker but only when her husband wasn't in bed with her. She had sought help at a sleep clinic and believed her sleepwalking to be under control with medication so her husband felt safe after four years to go on a conference trip for a job as an English professor at a local college in near where the small town in which they lived in Vermont.



      The search party finds a piece of her nightgown on a branch on the road going toward the river. Once twenty-one-year-old Lianna, the narrator of this book, got her mother down from the top of the bridge when she had sleepwalked naked. She also stopped her from turning the entire azalea bush from being spray painted completely silver in front of the house. But that night she didn't hear her mother get up and go sleepwalking and she's feeling the guilt.



      The state trooper detective working the case, Gavin Rikert knew her mother because he too sleepwalks and the two met at the sleep clinic. She finds out about sleep sex in which the sleeper wants sex in their sleep and will sleepwalk to look for it. Gavin insists that they were merely a support group for each other and that nothing happened between the two of them, but Lianna wonders. Meanwhile, Gavin is asking her out on dates and she is accepting.



      Back at home, Lianna's dad drinks himself to sleep and her twelve-year-old sister Paige who at first was out searching for clues when her mother went missing is now changing into someone who is bitter and hardened and not caring about anything. Except perhaps what happened to their mother which is still a mystery. Did she really sleepwalk into the river? If so where is the body? Or did she leave her family? Or did something more sinister happen? Throughout the book are a page written for each chapter that is like a diary supposedly written by Annalee that deals with how she felt about her sleepwalking and sleep sex.



      This book meanders like it's in a fog which I realize that the main character Lianna is in as her grief over her mother that she can't quite express because the reality of it isn't there without a body. But that doesn't make for good reading. It tries to build up suspense but fails to do so. There is a twist at the end that I didn't see coming and I appreciated the creativity of it. Overall this is just an okay book. It's short so it has that going for it. I give it three and a half stars out of five.



      Quotes

      People survive by being callous, not kind, he sometimes told his students, not trying to be dismissive of the species, but realistic. How, he lectured, could we ever face the morning if we did not grow inured to the monstrosities tha marked the world daily: tsunamis and plane crashes and terrorism and war?

      -Chris Bohjamlian (The Sleepwalker p 10)



      Sometimes I’m not sure which hits us harder that relief when we wake up from a nighmare and realize it was just a dream, or the sadness when we wake up from a good dream—a really good dream—and realize that nothing was real.

      -Chris Bohjamlian (The Sleepwalker p 46)
    • 4/5
      One day, Annalee Ahlberg goes missing. She was a sleepwalker, and had wandered before. But now, no one can find her. She leaves behind two daughters, Lianna and Paige, and her husband. There are questions of infidelity, but are they true?
      Lianna becomes involved with a detective assigned to the case, but wonders what he is hiding from her. Can she really trust him? She also wonders if she and Paige are also sleepwalkers, as there have been some incidents.
      A beautifully written story with a bit of mystery.
    • 2/5
      I received an Advance Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

      Having come relatively recently to the works of Chris Bohjalian via The Guest Room, I was excited to be able to jump in to another of his books. I'm sorry to say that I didn't connect with these characters nor get very much out of this story.

      A brief summation of the plot is that we are introduced to a family where sleepwalking is prevalent. The maternal character is missing and the eldest daughter narrates. I found the narrating stilted and awkward. The mother is frequently referred to by her first and last name, even though the mother-daughter relationship is described as close. I found that strange as I read it over and over. It was as if the daughter was describing someone who had been gone for years rather than weeks.

      The element of suspense never built up for me, and the big reveal felt very anticlimactic.

      I haven't given up on Mr. Bohjalian however, and will try again.
    • 4/5
      A missing mother with a sleepwalking history. Her daughter uncovers an entire other side of her parents.
    • 2/5
      I have only read one other Chris Bohjalian book, and that was The Guest Room, where he took the oddest approach of something as serious as sex trafficking. I liked the writing style though, and with such a large fan base, I was willing to give him another go, but I think The Sleepwalker is where we part ways.

      Now, some of you know that I love unlikable characters. There is so much to be done with them whether it be their own redemption, their undoing, what they teach me about myself when an author is crafty enough to get me to relate to those who I would ordinarily find no common ground with. Then there are just characters who never learn and have nothing to bring to the table for the characters around them, or to their reader. The Sleepwalker was riddled with just such characters. There was not one likeable character, not one with any redeeming quality, and not one who I learned anything from.

      The main character, Lianna, from whose perspective the story is being told, is a hot mess. She is desperate for information about her mothers disappearance, desperate enough for a boyfriend, and kinky enough to involve herself with a man who has the oddest connection to her family, has his own serious problems, and is someone that any rational woman would steer clear of, but Lianna goes for him and ends up relishing the perversion, then being pissed about it, going back, etc. I really wish that I could be more clear, but it is a spoiler if I go further.

      Then, there is this entire thing about sleep sex. I generally look up things when inspired by my reading, but the way that Bohjalian depicted this condition, I honestly don't want to know. I prefer to go on believing that the majority was a figment of his perverted mind, and it isn't at all how he has told it. If you know otherwise, keep it to yourself.

      It was the end that saved this book from being an epic failure. The entire read is moving in a direction that the reader is seeing unfold slowly (very slowly), but it is literally the last three sentences of the book that changed what I thought I was seeing into something entirely different. That left me wowed, it really did. How unfortunate for me that everything that proceeded it, offered little to my liking.

      NOTE: I am in the minority here...Again. You should know that as I write this post, there are 196 Goodreads ratings that are averaging 4-stars. Obviously other readers weren't as bothered with some of the things that I was, and you might not be either. Of course, this is a NetGalley offering, so one has to bare in mind that those titles often rate a pinch higher before release.
    • 5/5
      Lianna's mother, an attractive professional who suffers from sleepwalking, especially when her college professor husband is out of town, is lost. When Lianna woke one morning, she discovered that her mother was no where in the house and the car was not gone. When the police were contacted, a search of the nearby woods yielded only a torn piece of her nightgown in a shrub. The family is hoping against hope that she will be found; however, they fear that she might have fallen in a nearby river.

      As with most of Chris Bohjalian's novel, you never know what you will discover within the covers. He has been successful in writing in several genres. He generally has a twist at the end of his novels that you didn't expect. This novel is no different. The novel not only introduces the reader to the problem of adult sleepwalking, a sleep disorder more frequently observed in children, but also sleep sex. Although the plot of the novel is discovering what happened to Annalee Ahlberg, the reader won't find out the truth until a number of family secrets are reveals. As I have discovered with all Bohjalian books, this one is a great read.
    • 4/5
      Annalee Ahlberg is a sleepwalker . . . and now she is missing. Her husband, Warren, rushes home from a conference while the searchers gather. But the search party finds no trace of Annalee, just a scrap of material that might possibly be from her nightshirt. As the days stretch into weeks, there’s no trace of Annalee and everyone assumes she is dead.

      Lianna leaves school to care for her younger sister, Paige. As Lianna searches for answers to the mystery surrounding her mother’s disappearance, she finds she has more questions than answers. Why did her mother only sleepwalk when her father was away? Where is her mother’s body? And why does the detective know so much about Annalee?

      A feeling of uneasiness permeates the telling of this tale, keeping the reader a bit off-balance, wondering exactly what is true. With well-developed, believable characters, the story slowly unfolds as the plot twists and turns. Unexpected revelations reinforce the sense of uneasiness and tensions slowly mount.

      The sleepwalking information woven into the plot adds a depth of realism to the story and the steadily-increasing intrigue keeps the pages turning toward a surprising plot twist that readers aren’t likely to see coming.

      Recommended.
    • 5/5
      This was/is, once again, one of my favorite Chris Bohjalian's books. It is a wonderful mystery that kept me guessing all the way through.

      I loved the beginning of each chapter in a Double Bindish sort of way to give you possible insight or clues to the mystery. I would like to think that I am very good at solving these mysteries, however, the reality is, I don't want to solve them. I want to be taken for a ride through the book and have the inner story revealed as the author has intended. Chris never disappoints in this area!

      I took as long as I could to read this book. I was forcing myself to slow down, it was coming to the end that I did not want to face. I wanted to know, but I didn't want the story to continue.

      My thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday for providing me with this advance readers copy.
    • 5/5
      This was my first Bohjalian book and man I have been missing out. Such a tale he weaved. It had me guessing and changing my views throughout. I did figure out who did it 3/4 of the way through but not the how. That was saved until the end. I will definitely be reading more of his books. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 big ones!!
    • 5/5
      I have read all of Bohjalian's books. I can't remember even one that I didn't like. The Sleepwalker is about a happy family, a normal happy family, or so it would seem. Annalee Ahlberg, a self employed architect is the mother of Lianna and Paige, their father is a professor. I found them and all of the characters likable and engaging. Their happiness is real, but there is an underlying concern, Annalee is a sleepwalker. She walks when her husband is away, and sometimes finds herself in difficult situations. In one case Lianna literally pulled her mother out of a dangerous situation. For years, it seemed that she had her sleepwalking under control, but one night she disappears. What follows her disappearance is an intriguing story with an ending that you won't see coming.
    • 3/5
      This story about sleepwalking is fairly good, yet a bit flat. I prefer a book with more memorable characters and better use of language.
    • 4/5
      THE SLEEPWALKER
      Chris Bohjalian


      MY RATING ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▫️
      PUBLISHER Penguin Random House Audio
      PUBLISHED January 10, 2017


      SUMMARY
      Annalee Ahlberg suffers from parasomnia, she's a sleepwalker. She is also an architect, living in rural Vermont in a beautiful red Victorian home right beside the Gale River. She has a history of having been rescued from dangerous activities by her family in the middle of the night while sleepwalking. Most of the time her husband is right there beside her at night. One morning her daughters, Lianna, 21, and Paige, 12, wake up to find that their mother is missing from her bed. Their father, Warren, was not there that night. He was out of town at a conference in Iowa.

      A detective from Waterbury Vermont, Gavin Rikert, a friend of Annalee's, inserts himself into the case. Is that even ethical? What exactly was his relationship with Annalee?

      Much of the story's focus is on the family's attempt to handle the emotions associated with their missing wife and mother. Warren, a college English professor buries himself in alcohol and work, mentoring several cute young coeds. Lianna withdraws from college in order to take care of her dad and her younger sister. She smokes pot and drinks to dull the pain and gets involved in a secret relationship. Paige, misses her mom so much she swim the river to try to find her. Her grades start to suffer and she begins withdrawing from her favorite after school activities.

      What really happened what to Annalee that night? Will this family recover from the grief if there's no closure? What are the police doing to find her?


      REVIEW
      I love books that truly surprise you at the end. The Sleepwalker most certainly did that for me. It's a well written book with a unique and original story about parasomnia. Parasomnia includes sleepwalking, nightmares, sleep aggression, sleep-related eating disorders and sleep behavior disorders. Before reading this book I had very little insight into sleep disorders so I found this book to be both educational and interesting. Another huge plus for the book for me!

      The story is interestingly told from the perspective of the 21-year-old daughter Lianna. (Love Love Love the names Annalee and Lianna) Lianna attempts to find out what might've happened to her mother by talking to various friends and family. Even with all the questions Lianna asks it is hard to figure out who and what to believe, making the book a page-turner.

      I listened to the audio version of this book and found the main narrator, Cady McClain to be very good. The second narrator, of short thoughts between chapters could have been better. This was the first Chris Bohjalian book I had ever read, but certainly not the last. I am definitely interested in reading more from him. What a great storyteller!
    • 4/5
      Decent and well-written as usual, but has a couple of obvious devices and there are no real surprises. I just read it for escape and to see how he would get to the eventual conclusion. Lianna's character was interesting without being too quirky. She rang true to me even if her sister didn't. Are all 12-year-olds so cynical, unshockable and independent? In Vermont?
    • 5/5
      Bohjalian writing is so effortless to read. In this novel, I love the way prior to each chapter there's a diary entry, but we don't know whose. This is a mystery unlike others I've read. Parasomnia was a new term for me and I am so glad not to have it in my family!
    • 4/5
      The things people are capable of when they are asleep, wow. I can definitely say that I learned a lot about sleepwalking (and parasomnia), more than I ever knew existed.

      Also, while I have had Midwives on my TBR list for...ever, this is my first Chris Bohjalian book. He didn't let me down either. I'm always impressed when an author can see things from many points of view whether they are male or female. Mr. Bohjalian did that. The book was easy to read and while nothing super suspenseful was happening, it still managed to hold my attention.

      The book was straight up mystery. What happened to Annalee Ahlberg? She was a known sleepwalker who disappeared from her bed one night. Her husband, Warren, and two daughters, Lianna and Paige, are left devastated when the police turn up nothing but a piece of fabric from Annalee's night shirt leaving everyone to think the worst. But Lianna is not satisfied and she connects with one of the detectives to try and figure out what happened to her mother.

      I'm intrigued that this is Sleepwalker, #1 - I have no idea where they will go with book #2 but I do have an idea.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. Interesting story and issue
    • 4/5
      Bohjalian always takes me somewhere I don't expect to go. Don't know much about sleepwalking, but learned a bit, as well as got caught in a good mystery. Dark, compelling, well crafted -- a winning trio for a story with suspense in it.

      From the publisher:
      When Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, her children fear the worst. Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction manifests in ways both bizarre and devastating. Once, she merely destroyed the hydrangeas in front of her Vermont home. More terrifying was the night her older daughter, Lianna, pulled her back from the precipice of the Gale River bridge. The morning of Annalee's disappearance, a search party combs the nearby woods. Annalee's husband, Warren, flies home from a business trip. Lianna is questioned by a young, hazel-eyed detective. And her little sister, Paige, takes to swimming the Gale to look for clues. When the police discover a small swatch of fabric, a nightshirt, ripped and hanging from a tree branch, it seems certain Annalee is dead, but Gavin Rikert, the hazel-eyed detective, continues to call, continues to stop by the Ahlbergs' Victorian home. As Lianna peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Annalee's disappearance, she finds herself drawn to Gavin, but she must ask herself: Why does the detective know so much about her mother? Why did Annalee leave her bed only when her father was away? And if she really died while sleepwalking, where was the body?
      Conjuring the strange and mysterious world of parasomnia, a place somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, The Sleepwalker is a masterful novel from one of our most treasured storytellers.
    • 4/5
      Interesting and kept one's attention throughout.
      Look forward to reading other works by Bohjalian.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. Stayed up late to finish it because it was bothering me not knowing how it would end! The plot twist caught me by surprise. When the mother of the family goes missing one night, her family fears that she drowned while sleepwalking, which she is known to do when her husband is away. Her family lives in limbo for many weeks not knowing what happened to her. Meanwhile, her oldest daughter stays home from her senior year of college to care for her younger sister and find out what she can about her mother's past. Great read.
    • 4/5
      Annalee Ahlberg disappears one night while sleepwalking, thereby throwing her family into chaos and despair. A totally different type of suspense novel based on a little explored illness, parasomnia. Lianna Ahlberg is determined to get to the bottom of her mom's death but at what cost to herself and her family?
    • 4/5
      Chris Bohjalian never disappoints. With THE SLEEPWALKER, he has again written a novel that is both plot- and character-driven, heavier on character. He gives the reader a can’t-put-it-down engaging story and examines its main characters as we, along with the narrator, try to figure out what happened to a missing wife and mother, Annalee.

      THE SLEEPWALKER is told from the viewpoint of Lianna, one of Annalee’s daughters, years after the incident. When Lianna’s college professor father goes to a conference for the weekend, she and her younger sister wake one morning to discover their mother is not in the house. Immediately, they (and soon most everyone else) suspect that their mother had wandered off while she was asleep. Annalee has a history of sleepwalking.

      In the remainder of THE SLEEPWALKER, Lianna observes the main characters. While her father and sister seem to be sure Annalee had died after sleepwalking, Lianna only suspects this. She becomes involved with a detective on the case, Gavin, and wonders about his involvement with her mother even while Lianna is more and more attracted to him.

      Adding to the mystery are the italicized lines between chapters. Who writes them? Although Lianna narrates this story, those paragraphs are obviously special clues.

      Perhaps some readers will not like the relationship between Lianna and Gavin. She is only 21 while he is 33. That age difference would have been illegal if they were a little younger, and you might think he would have considered her off limits. So maybe the story would work a little better if she was older. But maybe not; this way we can be suspicious of his guilt and his intentions.

      Bohjalian’s THE SLEEPWALKER is another winner.

      I won this book from luxuryreading.com.
    • 3/5
      The Sleepwalker, Chris Bohjalian, author; narrators, Candy McClain, Grace Experience
      The novel is told mostly through the voice of Lianna Ahlberg, but occasionally, another younger voice interjects with questions, concerns or explanations. I disliked several characters and I don’t know if it was the way the narrator portrayed them or if they were simply over developed, making them seem like caricatures rather than actual individuals.
      Annalee and Warren Ahlberg lived in Bartlett, Vermont, with their two children, Paige and Lianna. Nine years separated the girls because of their mother’s frequent miscarriages. Paige was twelve and Lianna was twenty-one. She was about to enter her senior year in college.
      Warren was a professor at Middlebury College and Annalee was an architect with an office in Middlebury. From outward appearances they were a typical happy family. Annalee was devoted to her children, and the couple seemed devoted to each other, but Annalee had a unique problem. She suffered from parasomnia or somnambulism or what is better known as sleepwalking. Lianna had, on occasion, discovered her mother in this state. One time, she actually found her on a bridge and may have saved her life. Annalee was unaware of what she did when she went for a walk in her sleep. Somnambulists had been known to drive in their sleep. Their eyes would be open, they would appear conscious, but they were in a sleep state and were not aware of the presence of others. They might go out naked, or take off their clothes at some point later on. They might have sex in their sleep. Sometimes, they would go out searching for sex while sleeping. They were unaware and often ashamed of this behavior. There were sleep clinics which attempted to treat this disorder which appeared to be genetic and could, therefore, be passed on to progeny.
      Because Annalee only seemed to walk in her sleep when her husband, Warren, was traveling, he had stopped making business trips until he felt she was stable and no longer would be in danger of walking in her sleep and possibly coming to harm. When he felt it was safe, he decided to attend a conference, and on that first night when he was gone and the girls watched over their mother, something went wrong. When Paige woke up in the morning, she discovered her mother was gone. She rushed to tell Lianna. They both searched for her but did not find her. They called 911, but they were rebuffed by a responder who said they should call back because the shift was ending shortly. When they reached their dad, he told them how to proceed and the police eventually arrived. One of the detectives was a man called Gavin Rikert. Coincidentally, he also had a sleep disorder, and he and Annalee had become friends when they were both in the sleep clinic at the same time. Even though Annalee was a good deal older, they bonded because of their mutual problem. When he began to interrogate the family, he was kind and Lianna was attracted to him. It was largely through this relationship that the mystery of Annalee’s disappearance was explored.
      Regarding the novel, I didn’t think the vulgar moments were necessary. I also thought that there were a lot of side themes which didn’t seem that relevant to the thread of the story. Lianna was a bit shallow and self-indulgent when it came to snooping into the affairs and private records of others. She seemed immature on the one hand and overly promiscuous on the other. Her rude, often insolent and arrogant behavior made the relationship with a more adult and older Gavin, seem less plausible to me. At 33, he was about a dozen years older. Why would a “grown-up” tolerate the tantrums of an immature young woman, even one who is trying to find out what happened to her mother, a mother who had also been his friend? Paige was a bit over characterized as a sarcastic near-teenager. Warren Ahlberg seemed a bit too distant at times, not involved enough with helping the girls cope with the mystery of their missing mother as a parent normally would, even if they were suffering as well.
      While I enjoyed the book, because of the information on somnambulism, and it was obvious that the author did a great deal of research for the book, I found some of the story disjointed. Still, as with all of Bohjalian’s books, there were secrets, lies, twists, misdirection and surprises which held my interest. I never expected the ending, but it left me with unanswered questions that arose from what I thought were holes in the narrative that remained unfilled.
    • 4/5
      This is the 16th book that I've read by this author and always enjoy them!
      This one is about a woman (a mother & wife) who sleepwalks and one night just disappears. The oldest daughter, 21-yrs-old, tells the tale of trying to discover what has happened to her mother and why. It was very interesting -- I learned some new things about sleepwalking! And it was mysterious, even to the last sentence! I like that! And I would recommend this book :)
    • 3/5
      Lianna Ahlberg has always known that her mother, Annalee, is a sleepwalker. So when Annalee goes missing, her family immediately assumes she has vanished while sleepwalking. After all, Lianna once pulled her naked mother off a bridge near the river by their home. A scrap of her nightshirt is found near that same river, and everyone assumes the worst. College-aged Lianna, her twelve-year-old sister, Paige, and their father, Warren, must grapple with a life without this loving mother and wife. Still, the police, including detective Gavin Rikert, continue to probe into Annalee's disappearance. And so does her family. Lianna finds herself learning more about her mother, her parents' marriage, and her family's history of sleepwalking. She also finds herself drawn to Gavin, who knew her mother before she disappeared. Where is Annalee, or her body? And what really happened that night?

      This story is almost a treatise in the facts of sleepwalking, or parasomnia. It is told from Lianna's point of view, but interspersed with odd snippets from a journal (or something, we aren't sure) with facts, thoughts, and ruminations about sleepwalking. It's also a very (very) slow-building mystery as we discover what happened to Annalee Ahlberg (as Lianna calls her repeatedly throughout the novel - something that bothered me. Just call her mom!). The novel certainly has some intrigue, but man, it's a slow buildup, and while I liked Lianna and Paige, I wasn't fully part of their world, and I didn't find myself rushing to read this book; it took me five or so days to finish it, which is a lot for me. Now I read it over the holidays, and I wasn't feeling well (not its fault), but still.

      Furthermore, the book details a lot of odd plot threads that never seem to fully connect. I often found myself wondering if it was interesting, or just dragging on. Having Lianna tell the story as she's looking back in time was also an odd storytelling device, as it just allowed for weird, pointless inserts (e.g., ruminating about how she never used condoms).

      By the time we get to the ending, it is somewhat surprising, but almost a little frustrating. So much buildup for very little resolution, and then the novel is over. In a way, I feel as if Bohjalian suffered (for me) from his greatness; I've loved so many of his other novels and characters that this one just fell a bit flat. It was interesting premise, and not a bad read, but certainly not my favorite of his.

      I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and Edelweiss (thank you!); it is available everywhere as of 1/10/2017.
    • 5/5
      Chris Bohjalian chooses fascinating topics for his novels, and then pulls the reader into these worlds that one gets lost in for a few hours. His 2012 novel, The Sandcastle Girls, about the 1915 Armenian genocide in Syria, a story that sadly resonates too much today, is a novel I frequently recommend to shoppers at the Book Cellar where I volunteer.

      A Light In The Ruins takes us to Italy during WWII, with a family caught up in the crosshairs of war. His novels set in contemporary times, like the brilliant The Double Bind, which deals with a young woman violently attacked on bike ride, and The Guest Room, about a bachelor party host who gets involved with a young woman forced into sexual slavery, have twists that leave you gasping.

      Bohjalian's newest novel, The Sleepwalker, takes on a topic not frequently dealt with in fiction. A woman prone to sleepwalking disappears from her home while her husband is out of town. Her two daughters, college-aged Lianna and 12-year-old swimmer Paige, were home that evening and heard nothing.

      As searchers look for Annalee Ahlberg's body in the nearby river, we slowly find out more about her life. She only sleepwalks when her husband is out-of-town, but why that is remains a mystery. The girls, particularly Lianna, feel guilty about what happened.

      The Ahlberg family is falling apart. Dad Warren retreats into his job as a professor at the local college and drinks himself into oblivion at night. Lianna takes a leave of absence from college, smokes weed all day, and gets side jobs as a magician while caring for her sister Paige.

      One of the police officers on the investigation becomes involved with Lianna. She discovers that he and her mother met at a clinic that deals with sleep disorders and they became a kind of two-person support group. But was that all they were to each other?

      The Sleepwalker has a very eerie quality to it, and as Bohjalian slowly unwinds more information about Annalee's disorder and her relationship with her husband and the cop, an uneasy feeling overcomes the reader.

      There is a shocking twist at the end, but upon reflection, Bohjalian gives a few clues that could be picked up on by a careful reader. The Sleepwalker would make a fabulous movie, as it has a very cinematic element to it. The characters are intriguing, the story moves briskly, and watching this family fall apart is heartbreaking.

      I highly recommend The Sleepwalker, both for fans of mysteries and of family stories. If you read Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, you'll want to put The Sleepwalker on your list.
    • 5/5
      I have loved Chris Bohjalian since I first read Trans-Sister Radio almost 17 years ago. I've never forgotten that book and have always made sure to get each one as quickly as they are published, signed whenever possible! The Sleepwalker doesn't disappoint. I started it this evening and just completed it before midnight. I wish I could have made it last longer but then again, I absolutely love when I can't put a book down. Annalee Ahlberg disappears the night that her husband is at a conference in another state. They fear the worst since she suffers from parasomnia or sleepwalking. This affliction affects her in bizarre ways as we start to find out as the story continues. Her oldest daughter, Lianna starts seeing one of the detectives who seems to know more than normal about her mother. Chris Bohjalian has done an amazing job conjuring this story about the very strange world of parasomnia. Highly recommended!