House of Sleep, a brief review
Disclosure: Kelly and I are pretty chummy. I enjoyed this novel (and a bunch of his as-yet unpublished work) that I asked him to edit my first novel.
tl;dr :: This novel is very good. 9/10. “Psychological fiction” is what Kelly calls it, and I think that’s an apt description. He has the writing chops, and it’s clear that he’s a serious student of the craft.
Reading House of Sleep is like walking through an old, gothic house full of heavy fog. A lot of time is spent squinting and getting your nose two inches away from something to really see it.
The novel focuses primarily on three people who are connected in ways almost beyond words. People stumbling through the same old house at dusk, hands outstretched for something to touch and orient themselves. Invisible strings tied beneath their sternums, pulling them in directions unclear, intersecting and sometimes tangling. Oh, and there’s a cult where people try to manifest things via their dreams.
The novel starts strongly, and the first line lays the premise for everything that follows:
For the characters, the plane between “dreams” and the "real world” seems so thin as to, at times, not exist. Mentally, they spend much of the story with a foot on each side, trying to pull things from one side to the other.
Kelly is fantastic with original metaphor. Here, it makes for prose with rich depth. At times, I felt as though it was a little too frequent and heavy-handed, and slightly distracting. This is, admittedly, a very small nitpick on my part. That being said, I believe Kelly’s intention with this was to illustrate how much time our Unconscious spends trying to connect seemingly disparate things, as manifested in our dreams and their seemingly random and haphazard associations. If such is the case, then I think Kelly hit the nail on the head.
and one more:
Kelly does an excellent job creating unique voices for characters. This is a particularly tall order, given how much time we spend in their heads and dreams and hearts. This, perhaps, impresses me most about the novel.
The author earnestly addresses things like faith, fate, intuition, spirit, love, and modernity. As with any piece of fiction worth it’s weight, there’s a lot to unpack. Russian nesting dolls all worthy of opening, and whose eyes seem to follow yours.
House of Sleep is the kind of novel that will probably stick with you for a little while after you finish it. It does not lack unexpected doorways and dead-end hallways and M.C. Escher stairways.
If you only have twenty bucks left in your book-buying fund for this year, please let this be the book you buy. You can purchase it here