A subtle, enigmatic, and beautiful elegy to a husband and marriage that ends in tragedy. De Moor's book is sensual and spare, whether she's writing about love, a walk in an ice forest, or baking a cake in the middle of the night. There are layers of meaning here, which with adroit subtlety de Moor lets readers puzzle for themselves.”
—Claire Fuller, author of Swimming Lessons and Bitter Orange
"Compact, haunting, and lovely ... it is unhurried and assured; no word is wasted ... In both its rich and unapologetic descriptions of domesticity and frank attitude toward sex ... the book is a treatise on one individual's womanhood."
—Kirkus Reviews
"In quiet, unrushed, yet deeply penetrating prose, Dutch author de Moor portrays an unnamed woman during a single night as she recalls her deceased husband and a past shame while engaging with a new lover—all the while baking a cake, her means of coping. An extraordinary accomplishment."
—Library Journal, Best Books of 2019 List
"A taut, finely wrought story that crackles with tension ... David Doherty’s English rendition of de Moor’s prose is nothing short of stunning ... The result is a book that is utterly captivating, brilliantly alive in every line – a quick and piercing read that will stay with you for a long time to come."
—The Riveter: European Literature Network
"Poignant ... delivers insightful ruminations on marriage, love, love lost, and the unsolved mysteries lurking underneath the surface of everyday lives ... Sleepless Night is a meditative novel where the seemingly mundane reveals itself to be the harbinger of profound insights."
—Foreword Reviews
"De Moor’s novel is encased in calm, its surfaces appearing to be safe—until they suddenly crack open like thin ice beneath our feet. A beautiful, mysterious and shocking book."
—Nancy Kline, author of The Faithful and Lightning: The Poetry of René Char
"This sort of small (but abyss-deep) tale depends very much on the telling, and de Moor does a very fine job ... Sleepless Night is both melancholy and hopeful (but nowhere near cloyingly so), and doesn't force too many answers; love and loss remain mysteries—but ultimately quite satisfyingly so."
—Complete Review
"Sleepless Night is told through a successful framing device: our nameless protagonist often finds herself troubled into restless insomnia and so, when this occurs, she pops into the kitchen and spends the rest of the dark night baking ... What this affecting story leaves us with, upon its closure, is the nervous unease that life doesn’t care about us."
—Books and Bao
"The charm of Margriet de Moor's book is due to a combination of sensuality and reflection, as well as a musical language of great beauty that explores the meanderings of the human soul with rare clarity."
—Le Figaro
“Fluid and musical … this hypnotic portrayal of an amorous and sensual resurrection gracefully tells of regret over failed encounters and the fragile hope of new beginnings.”
—Le Monde
“Carefully narrated, cleverly constructed and fascinating in its psychological finesse.”
—Frankfurter Rundschau
Praise for Margriet de Moor’s other work:
“An astute sense of musical form as a way of organizing narrative, and a wonderful sense of passion ... There is life and love and hurt on every page.”
—The New York Times
“It’s hard to resist using the word ‘symphonic’ to describe this exquisitely composed, piercingly moving story. De Moor continues to scale increasingly impressive heights.”
—Kirkus Reviews
2019-03-04
During a bout of insomnia, a young widow ruminates on her husband's suicide. While a Bundt cake bakes in the oven and the house is silent, she scrutinizes the past for telling details, the moment on which everything hangs.
Compact, haunting, and lovely, the story takes place over the course of one long night interspersed with flashbacks to the unnamed narrator's young adulthood. She recalls meeting her husband, Ton, as college students in the late 1960s and their fall through winter ice while skating on frozen canals. We learn of their brief marriage, as they establish themselves as a couple on Ton's inherited family farm. Dutch author de Moor (The Kreutzer Sonata, 2014, etc.) was a classical singer and pianist before becoming a writer, and even in translation, her prose retains a balanced, musical quality. Descriptions of places and people are evocative, but de Moor also renders more abstract concepts—such as what it's like to be alone and wide awake in the middle of the night—with razor-sharp specificity: "The fever of sleeplessness drives people to do the strangest things. They whisper poems that appear in mirror-writing behind their eyes, weigh grains of rice on imaginary scales, picture themselves lying on a bed of red velvet." Despite the novel's short length, it is unhurried and assured; no word is wasted even as de Moor spends paragraphs recounting often slow and mundane processes, like mixing eggs and milk and yeast to make dough. Yet there is vitality in the chores, too, as when the dough is later kneaded, when the widow begins "slamming my fists into the pale, pliant lump in front of me." In both its rich and unapologetic descriptions of domesticity and frank attitude toward sex (as the widow's cake bakes, her latest lover lies asleep upstairs), the book is a treatise on one individual's womanhood.
De Moor's book fails to provide easy answers or pat conclusions, but of course life is like that, too. Like the widow, we must all learn to tolerate that which is ambiguous, unexplained, incomplete.
