Review

Sleep With Me

By Joanna Briscoe

Published by Bloomsbury

This sensual and psychologically disturbing novel is compulsively readable.

Richard, a book pages editor at a national newspaper, and Lelia, an academic, live together in Bloomsbury. They meet up with their well-off friends, eat ice cream in steamy cafés and spend lazy Sundays in their small flat.

Just before leaving for a Christmas Eve party, Richard and Lelia have hasty, urgent sex. Pleased with themselves, they spend the evening nudging and winking at each other and drinking with their friends. They barely notice the drably dressed and quiet young woman hovering in the shadows.

As Lelia becomes aware that she is pregnant, so Richard begins to fall for the slight, enigmatic Sylvie. Initially dismissing her as a boring, mousy creature, Richard is soon arranging to meet her for lunch, sending her messages and obsessing about his desire for her.

Sylvie wields absolute control over him in a strangely calm way, evading his questions and entreaties, disappearing for days on end and then returning or leaving affectionate notes for him. Tortured by his love for Sylvie, Richard begins to lose interest in Lelia and their growing baby.

But why is Sylvie so enigmatic?

Sleep With Me is about power, lust, infidelity and betrayal. It is blisteringly scathing about the inadequacies of men – Richard is an idiot in almost every way – and extremely good on the erotic power of denial.

Briscoe brilliantly develops the initially ghost-like character of Sylvie into the manipulative and irresistible figure who comes to exert such a hold over those she chooses to let near her. Despite an escalating sense of unease about her motives, the reader experiences a touch of schadenfraude about Sylvie’s demolition of Richard and Lelia’s smug, middle-class world.

Creepy and seductive.

Reviewed by James Smith, Booktrust website editor

Also of interest

Lesley Glaister writes disturbing psychological dramas: try the claustrophobic Honour Thy Father; the touching Digging to Australia; the gritty and moving Now You See Me and the erotic As Far as You Can Go (Bloomsbury).

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