The Sleepwalker

Chris Bohjalian — 2017

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Guest Room" comes a spine-tingling novel of lies, loss, and buried desire the mesmerizing story of a wife and mother who vanishes from her bed late one night. When Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, her children fear the worst. Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction manifests in ways both bizarre and devastating. Once, she merely destroyed the hydrangeas in front of her Vermont home. More terrifying was the night her older daughter, Lianna, pulled her back from the precipice of the Gale River bridge. The morning of Annalee's disappearance, a search party combs the nearby woods. Annalee's husband, Warren, flies home from a business trip. Lianna is questioned by a young, hazel-eyed detective. And her little sister, Paige, takes to swimming the Gale to look for clues. When the police discover a small swatch of fabric, a nightshirt, ripped and hanging from a tree branch, it seems certain Annalee is dead, but Gavin Rikert, the hazel-eyed detective, continues to call, continues to stop by the Ahlbergs' Victorian home. As Lianna peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Annalee's disappearance, she finds herself drawn to Gavin, but she must ask herself: Why does the detective know so much about her mother? Why did Annalee leave her bed only when her father was away? And if she really died while sleepwalking, where was the body? Conjuring the strange and mysterious world of parasomnia, a place somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, "The Sleepwalker "is a masterful novel from one of our most treasured storytellers."

Reviews

Melissa Palmer@melissapalmer404

Nov 5, 2023

Book #45 Read in 2017 The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian Lianna's mother has a history of sleepwalking when her father is out of town. It happens again but this time no one can find her mother. Did she drown? Jump off a bridge? Run away? These questions haunt the family as they wait for news--a body discovered; a letter that she has left the family; something. This book had some slow parts--I quickly tired of Lianna's self-destructive drug use--but the ending more than made up for any down spots. I borrowed this book from the public library.

Tanya Sutton@mrsreads

Nov 16, 2021

I love Bohjalian's storytelling and this book was no different. It tells the story of family struggling to keep themselves together after the unexpected disappearance of the mother, who was a sleepwalker and who left their house one night and never returned. While the police attempt to locate her, the eldest daughter takes over her role as caretaker of the family, cooking, cleaning, and trying to keep her father and younger sister from feeling the loss quite as much. While the father turns to alcohol the sisters each investigate the disappearance of their mother on their own, leading to some startling discoveries. Bohjalian's writing is gorgeous and the voices of the girls are both very authentic and believable, especially that of Lianna. This book is billed as a thriller but in reality it's a slow burn. The book was believable and the insight into life as and with a parasomniac was fascinating. I liked that the characters were written as real people who had a sleeping disorder rather than their entire existence being about their disorder. I didn't at all see the ending coming which was also a nice change of pace - nothing felt forced and all the details leading up to the end were dropped into the story with such subtly that you don't even notice them until the story comes together at the end. If you like Bohjalian I'd recommend this book. (Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.)