When
She Sleeps
By
Leora Krygier
Emerging Author Presents Two Faces, Voices to the Literary World
Toby
Press, a small publishing house with a knack for discovering prize-winning
authors features Leora Krygier’s When She Sleeps
in their fall fiction lineup. It looks as if they have acquired
another winner.
Krygier
weaves the enchanted world of Vietnam and the asphalt streets and
privileged hillside homes of LA into an intricate story. When
She Sleeps is as much about language and how we are shaped
by it as it is about two girls in different parts of the world who
are attached genetically to one another but who have no knowledge
of the other’s existence. Out of neglect and destitution,
the child of war-stricken Saigon takes to living her Vietnamese
mother’s life through the fragile woman’s dreams; the
American daughter of a doctor in Los Angeles’ San Fernando
Valley finds little sleep and when she does, it is troubled.
Two
stories are told with distinctive voices that somehow are entwined.
Their real lives throb with vibrant sights, sounds and smells while
their dream sequences feel much like a song that was sung in the
past and remains with us as we walk our every day lives. The reader
comes to understand the emotional needs that draw the two to one
another; the sisters are like two parts of a Miz Pah coin, each
worn as a charm by strangers a half globe away. Inevitably the jagged
edges begin to fit and the mystery of their lives is revealed.
Krygier
has woven a kind of magical realism that fits this literary category
and, at once, is uniquely her own. Publishers often become jaded,
believing that there nothing new is offered to them; some don’t
recognize it when it comes to sit in their laps. This press deserves
much credit for taking a chance on a story entirely its own, on
a book--from the story line to the melody--consuming and beautiful.
|
The
Book |
Toby Press |
2004 |
Paperback |
1592640869 |
Mainstream Fiction |
More
at Amazon.com |
Excerpt
|
NOTE:
|
The
Reviewer |
Carolyn Howard Johnson |
2005 |
NOTE:
Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of
This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection
of Stories Remembered and the best-selling The Frugal
Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't |
|