review by Marcianne Miller –
What I remember most about this novel is that I laughed my head off.
When I wasn’t close to tears, that is. Or blown away by the quality of the writing. This is a novel worth praising to the sky, in the hopes prayers might bring the author’s next novel out right away.
The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing is the first novel by Brooklyn, New York author Mira Jacob. For 13 years, every other Thursday night, she invited other writers to read at Pete’s Place, creating a legendary writer-audience experience that is still going on.
Like the East Indian-American family in her novel, Jacob grew up in New Mexico in a neighborhood where people didn’t know what kind of “Indian” she was. Apache? Or Mexican? It took her ten years to write Sleepwalker’s, a monumental risk that paid off in the carefully crafted, beautifully written story it became. It has won numerous awards.
Amima is a young woman who loves her family in the desert, but she also knows for her own sanity she can’t be trapped by them. She heads off to rainy Seattle where she works as a wedding photographer. Being the photographer at many weddings, instead of the bride at one, is a woeful disappointment to her mother, who goes into noisy and verbose despair every time she wonders if she is ever going to get grandchildren. Amima’s father, the well-respected brain surgeon Dr. Thomas Eapan, comes home every night after a busy day at the hospital, sits out on the back porch, and talks to dead people.
Reluctantly Amima moves back home and agrees to stay until she can find out what is happening to her father. In doing so, she, and the rest of her family have to deal with the secrets they’ve all tried to ignore. Like an onion that won’t stay buried, the past insists on unpeeling itself.
Thomas keeps his thoughts to himself for the most part, fearful perhaps that if he allowed himself to face what is bothering him, he would explode. It’s Kamala, the matriarch, the earth mother, the gourmet cook, who gives constant vent to her feelings. She’s uncensored and unrepentant, convinced that she is the only person in the family whose head is screwed on correctly. Her barrage of love erupts in fractured English that is the most hilarious dialogue I’ve ever heard. Because of the wonderful verbal quality of the novel, I strongly recommend you read the audio version, which is nicely narrated by Mira Jacob herself.
The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, by Mira Jacob, Random House 2014, 512 pp. Random House Audio: 15 hours. Visit the author’s website: www.Mira Jacob.com
