Madeleine Is Sleeping

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

When a girl falls into a deep and impenetrable sleep, the borders between her provincial French village and the peculiar, beguiling realm of her dreams begin to disappear: A fat woman sprouts delicate wings and takes flight; a failed photographer stumbles into the role of pornographer; a beautiful young wife grows to resemble her husband's viol. And in their midst travels Madeleine, the dreamer, who is trying to make sense of her own metamorphosis as she leaves home, joins a gypsy circus, and falls into an unexpected triangle of desire and love.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Novels, Literary Fiction, Literature, Short Stories

276 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is an American writer. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and teaches writing and literature at UC San Diego.

Bynum is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Madeleine is Sleeping was published by Harcourt in 2004 and was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her short stories, including excerpts from her new novel, have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Triquarterly, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and in Best American Short Stories. Her novel, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, was published in September 2008 and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2009.

In 2010, Bynum was named one of the New Yorker Magazine's top "20 Under 40" fiction writers.

Reviews

[Jamie Felton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story told in snatches of information laden with gossamer imagery and lush description. The creepy and the lovely are placed right on top of each other creating this feeling of wonder that all of these things can exist together. Madeleine is sleeping, and we are privy to her dreams as well as the world that is going on around her; however, the border between the two worlds is thin and permeable. Her dreams are filled with unusual people commonly categorized as "freaks" (I am a sucker for freaks). Meanwhile, the people whose lives revolve around keeping her asleep, are similiarly disjointed and questionable as far as their character and their motives. Sarah Bynum's strength is in her ability to describe the littlest things with perfect acuity.
"As Claude stumbles through the orchard, his expectations take on form, enormous size. They will have soft fingers. And gleaming hair. Their nipples will be tiny and wild as strawberries. In an interesting coincidence, Claude found a patch of berries last summer behind this same barn. He kept them to himself. He made visits when no one was looking. And remembering how shyly the berries appeared when he lifted up the canopy of their leaves, Claude pictured the girls' sleepy faces, their looks of surprise. How delighted they will be to see him."

[verbava · Rating 4 out of 5]

головна героїня дивиться на коханого чоловіка, який схилився перед нею, аби підняти з землі схожий на сонце апельсин, і ще не знає, що цей чоловік – коханий, але вже думає: як би я хотіла зараз торкнутися напівпрозорого, м'якого волосся на його шиї, пестити його пальцями, так легко, що він і не помітив би, що він і не здогадався би про мою ніжність. але не може отак торкатися, бо є щось, через що вона, власне, і стала головною героїнею, і це щось стоїть на заваді пестощам (і це вперше, коли їй усередині стає неймовірно боляче від свого особливого стану).
по-перше, це сама собою була гарнюча сцена. і ще якісь сорок сторінок після неї – тихе прокидання любові, безумно красиве, відчайдушне й безнадійне.
по-друге, у сцені з апельсином і тугою добре видно настрій книжки. коротенькі – іноді на одне речення – розділи такі виразні й візуальні, що створюють враження роману в картинках. мадлена спить (або ні), і все довкола теж сновидне: крилата науковиця, ритуали міських дітей, мандрівний цирк, жінка-скрипка і скрипка з жіночим обличчям; стоячи там, у саду, героїня бачить себе ніби трошечки збоку, її нутро зосереджується на золотих волосинках, і все навколо стає розмите, розфокусоване. ця зустріч – ніби середина розповіді, але водночас тут усе тільки починається, і відчуття початків, спроможних перевернути історію, у книжці мало не постійне.

[Danna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I generally don't reread books, but I've returned to this book many times to dip back in and savor individual pages that read, and look, like prose poems. This is one book I haven't put on the shelf after reading, but kept on my night stand since 2004. I have yet to articulate, let alone pinpoint the fascination, but there is something about Bynum's language that speaks to me like oracle, something akin to an ancient augury, birds taking flight to the east (or perhaps it's just the ative prose and the vivid characters: an obese woman who sprouts wings and floats above Madeleine's village, or Madeleine herself, dreaming wonder into being). A highly imaginative and original debut novel.

[Celeste Ng]

A truly wonderful book--both "full of wonders" and beautifully done. I didn't know what to expect from it, but I really enjoyed it. It's one of the most innovative books I've read in a long, long time, one of those books where you suddenly sit upright and whisper, "You can DO that?" It reminds me of why I wanted to be a writer in the first place.

Madeleine Is Sleeping is very much an experimentation in form, but what keeps it from being *just* experimental, and elevates it a well-crafted novel, is the prose. Bynum's images range from the unexpected to the marvelously bizarre, yet so precise, that you suspend your disbelief immediately. From the second page:

"A grotesquely fat woman lives in the farthest corner of the village. Her name is Matilde. When she walks to market, she must gather up her fat just as another woman gathers up her skirts, daintily pinching it between her fingers and hooking it over her wrists. Matilde's fat moves about her gracefully, sighing and rustling with her every gesture."

I bought in right there.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really cool book. Handjobs, spanking, provincial France, a young girl's sexual awakening, disfigurement: what more could one want? Some of its quirkiness was off-putting at first (a fat woman who sprouts wings and a woman who looks like a viol are among the first characters introduced) but once the heart of the story emerged I was hooked. With beautiful writing and an admirably clever form for a simple and age-old story, all its quirkiness pays off as Madeleine's dreams and reality come together for a powerful denouement.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a National Book Award finalist. A gossamer work, of the type that has to be read on the right day, in the right light, the right mood, as it falls very softly on the psyche. I found the fragments very lovely in themselves but not compelling on the cumulative level--most likely a factor of my own rather carnivorous mood at the moment. Will definitely give this another try in the cool of a summer day, a more dreamy geist to my zeit.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the first fifty pages or so (epub), I loved this book. Madeleine is sleeping, dreaming up beautiful dreams and spectacular characters and plots. Her Mother looks on, and the book goes like this for a while - switching from Madeleine's dreams to Mother, in the outside world, watching her daughter sleep.

But then I got extremely confused. Because Madeleine is, suddenly, also not sleeping...? And the characters she had dreamed up are modified (and less spectacular) participants in both her circus reality and several in her mother's reality. To make sense of it, I started thinking that her circus reality was just more of her dreaming. But then Bynum devotes more and more time to this part of the book, which is clearly not a dream, but an alternate (or truer?) reality for Madeleine, who was punished for a sexual "crime" she committed beforehand.

The realities of Madeleine sleeping under the care of Mother and siblings, and the reality of Madeleine and her circus friends, photographer lover (who comes out of nowhere as a plot feature), etc, eventually and inevitably collide and in the end, it seems that the version of Madeleine sleeping in her childhood home was some kind of metaphor about the Mother..? Then again, perhaps not, because the siblings clearly interacted with and cared for sleeping Madeleine as if she were real.

The point is, I don't get it!

I looked up summaries/interpretations/explanations online and really found no clear interpretation. The ones most tidy simply skipped everything about Madeleine sleeping and focused on her dallies with the circus crowd. And the interpretations who kept it real embraced the work as a beautiful and chaotic experiment, so I guess I must as well. Though, I've still got to give this work a 3 rating because overall I felt jerked around by the switching perspectives and foci, and because I didn't end up feeling close to many of the characters due to Bynum's habit of referring to her people by their noun instead of by their name (i.e. "the photographer" even after his name, Adrian, was introduced). Ugh. This was a frustrating book.

Many beautiful sentences, though.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful circle of a book. It was a bizarre one, and I loved it. Madeleine sleeps and as she stirs in her sleep we get to read what she is dreaming about. Her real and dream lives connect and take turns, becoming so indistinguishable that her reality could be her dream world and her dreams could be reality. Or maybe they are one and the same.

The language is gorgeous, cyclical, spare, beautifully crafted. It was hard for me to believe that Bynum wrote this book because it is so very different from the first book of hers that I read. I have to thank Jenny for making me read this writer! Also, I think that reading "Palimpsest" made me ready to read this book, because of both the language and the alternate reality element. I see many connections, it was a good decision to read them one after the other.

I highly recommend this book to those of you who enjoy freakish characters, whimsical stories, awkwardness, and slightly inappropriate developments.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young girl's strange, erotic journey... The other reviews here pretty much say it all. The vignettes are simultaneously lovely and freaky, and Bynum doesn't stray for a second from the fairylike, haunting tone she sets on the first page. This book was crafted perfectly. As a story, though, there was something missing for me. I think maybe I just don't find sexual awakening and the ensuing social consequences interesting enough to carry an entire novel. Also, the freak show thing has since been done to death, but that's not Bynum's fault, and to her credit her "freaks" don't seem to be standard carnival fare (a woman who can play her body hair like a viol! a flatulent man who can manipulate his sphincter like an oboe!). In any case, this one definitely deserves a reread, especially since it's so short.

[Stephi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Provocatively odd, and disturbingly detailed at times. I loved the writing, but I'm not sure how I felt overall about this book

[jenna Hudrlik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only let myself read a few pages a day of this book because I never wanted it to end. This is one of those books where I almost dont want to tell anyone about it because if they dont love it as much as they should then I am not sure that I could ever talk to them again...(lol) I love the prose style of writing, and the images that she puts in your head are amazing. This book is by far in my top 10 of all time. I must own a copy immediatley and read it once a year.

[Michael Bacon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A daring, creative, risk taking novel. It's an unconventional fairy tale, and very different from anything else I have read. The finely crafted structure and evocative language are the things that impressed me the most, but perhaps also the things I think people might struggle with.

This book definitely won't be for everyone. At times it is grotesque; even more often it is baffling. You definitely have to be OK with not really getting what is going on (exercising what John Keats called "negative capability," or the capacity to embrace uncertainty rather than demanding to understand), particularly for the first 50 or so pages. If that is your thing, there's a lot to love.

My score reflects what I feel was the artistic accomplishment of the piece: if it came down to personal enjoyment I might give it three stars, since it wasn't entirely my cup of tea. However, that was just down to personal preference. I wanted to give credit where it is due.

[Karen Mace · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is book 15 of my 20 Books of Summer 2020.

I normally devour a book that is full of the weird and wonderful! BUT for some reason I really struggled to connect with this book as it was just a little too 'off the wall' for me! I loved the set up with Madeleine asleep and the short and snappy flashes into her 'dreams' and the world she had created or found herself in but I often found myself completely unsure of whether it was dream world, real world or just somewhere in between! I found myself more interested in the little glimpses of her mum and family and their perspectives of watching Madeleine sleep while their lives carried on around them.

It was often quite dark and explicit, which didn't really seem to add much to the mix except more confusion as to wondering what was going on!! Maybe I need to try the book again to see if it makes more sense 2nd time round!

[Natalie P · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was like a surrealist’s wet dream. A coming of age tale told through ebbs and flows of reality and dreams. Quite honestly the strangest book I’ve ever read, and I was left feeling puzzled and slightly disappointed. There were parts of this book that put into words the shame and confusion that comes with questioning your own growing sexuality as a young girl. It seems every character in this book is on their own quest to understand their desires and impulses. Some lines left me speechless with the vague and yet precise description of these inner workings that I think so many of us have experienced yet feel too ashamed to speak on. So beautifully written, but so much left unexplained, perhaps that’s the markings of a truly great surrealist novel, but for me felt inconclusive. Definitely a read to get the cogs of your brain churning.

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely magical!!! I started this book not realizing what the format was going to be (small one-three paragraph chapters), which was a little off-putting at first. But then I started again on another night when I wasn't so tired and I am so glad that I did! This book is so beautiful, the prose blurring into poetry, the imagery creating a whole new world behind your eyes, complete with a fat lady who one day sprouts beautiful, fluttering wings. It is a sweet, sad melody that you cannot get out of your head, but that you miss the second it's gone. It's about a sleeping girl in provincial France, dreaming of a fantastical life, and by that token, it is about all of our lives, small and strange and full of wonder.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

surreal, somewhat grotesque, and very strange...I couldn't tell which parts were supposed to be really happening, and it was disturbing at some points...like the brothers and sisters were eating the girl at one point and saying that she tasted burnt around the edges...not my kind of fairy tale.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't even know how to review this gorgeous book other than to say that I read it in many places, but the best was when I was sitting by the river on the first hot day of the year, the sun so bright that I could only see the page in front of me. Magic.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange and off-putting book. The lyrical, dream-like style contrasts (deliberately, I think) with ugly words and shock value. I wanted to like it more.

[Manika · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

i really wanted to enjoy this book because the whimsy of it all is very appealing. it sparks a lot of thought about the in-group vs. the out-group and how easily people can become social pariahs. that said, it was a bit hard to follow. the structure of it was a refreshing change of pace initially, but it became easy to get lost between dreams and what was actually occuring.

[Amy May · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, I read about half of it. Sort of interesting, sort of weird. It's just not my style for what I enjoy - when I realized it felt like homework and I was telling myself "I should finish this so I can start reading something else" I just quit. And started reading something else.

More power to those of you who can make it through Madeline's dream world, let me know how it ends, would ya?

[Gabriela]

Beautiful prose, I just didn't know what was going on at some point. Definitely not the best book to get out of my reading slump, but I forced myself to finish it in case it was a revelation

[Dana ♡]

dnf at 15%

[Robert Wechsler]

Very well written, somehow manages not to be too precious, but its gossamer nature wasn't enough to pull me in or through.

[Meile Kuliesiute · Rating 4 out of 5]

Misticismo casi religioso.
Como si se hablara de santos, sus pecados y la indulgencia que llega como regalo consolador. El dolor y la suavidad que siempre lo acompañan, como una sombra engrapada.

Este libro suscita una tristeza inevitable, casi inmensa, un reverie melancólico que dura incontables días.

Retórica que envuelve, te deja soñando. Muy bello e incomprensible al mismo tiempo.

[Sandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange and sensual allegory of adolescence and sexual awakening with layers of metaphors and gossamer imagery. Very interesting writing, told in short segments, but due to this fragmented storytelling, it wasn’t very compelling overall. I think I’ll enjoy this story more on a reread and better appreciate the literary techniques now that I understand how the plot line unfolds.

[Natasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Completely bizarre. Feels like being swept up in someone else’s dreams…which I suppose is the goal! I liked the experimental, lyrical writing style, but it was just a bit too far out for me.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was terribly strange and left me with a feeling I wanted to wash away. If it had not read so quickly, I would not have finished it. Although it would be unfair to say that there weren't some moments of beautiful poetry; my favorite:

"She hears the word bell, or orchard, or swallow, and she experiences a strange surprise, like the feel of a coin in the soil. These words make her wistful; they overwhelm her with longing. Not for her orchard, nor the bell in her church, nor the swallows that nest in the eaves of her house. For something else altogether, something she would have forgotten completely.
She wonders: Why should these words pierce me, if they are not the remains of a currency I once knew how to spend?" (137)

[Powells.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fat woman sprouts delicate wings and takes flight; a failed photographer stumbles into the role of pornographer; a beautiful young wife grows to resemble her husband's viol: these are all characters in Sarah Shun Li Bynum's marvelous gem of a novel. Composed in deceptively simple vignettes, Madeleine Is Sleeping follows the life of a young comatose girl in provincial France as she joins a circus, entangles herself in a bizarre love triangle, and discovers the power behind the dreamed and the experienced, the delicate and the grotesque, in the discovery of art, sexuality, and community.
Recommended by Crystal, Powells.com

[Visha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small mouthfuls of story

A lyrical novel, whose form reminded me of Light Boxes and The Pink Institution, but the story, for all of its magical realism, is solid - the unique characters are well-formed and compelled by solid motivations (lust, romance, revenge, etc), the story has romance and suspense, all contained within a paragraph or so on each page, set off by a word or short phrase (for example: "Madeleine is sleeping" or "Stirring" or "Arcane"). As a writer, I found its form and lyricism inspiring; as a reader, I was compelled to finish the book and find out what happens with its characters.