Review of Prerequisites for Sleep

Prerequisites for Sleep

Prerequisites for Sleep is the first short-story collection from Nova Scotian Jennifer L. Stone, who only started writing when she returned home after a long time spent in Toronto.

Time away clearly proved beneficial to this exciting new voice, as the 13 stories have a beautiful detached yet intimate quality, with rich detail of small lives in daily crisis or quiet desperation.

Her theme is a large one: Is there mercy in the world? Not much, it would seem, but perhaps rather kindness, and the idea that minding one's own business will do for the men, women, and children who inhabit her Maritime world.

In the title story, a woman marries a man while pregnant with his friend's baby. The usual sentimental or melodramatic idea in the story is undercut by the woman's sense of life creeping up on her -- how each hour of each day takes hold and controls her, no matter how life is planned."If only" is not to be mourned, but contemplated.

Several of the stories have this quality of one's life being decided in small ways, with regret. In "Knowing," a woman drifts, never really knowing what to do. When she sees the man she might have married and his now-wife, she locks eyes with her, realizing "on her face, I saw the look of someone who knew exactly what she was doing, staring at someone who never would." That "someone" could be us, but Stone doesn't push the idea or wrap anything up neatly for the reader.

In the best story, "The Breath Before the Collision," Stone's ability to invoke spring's re-awakening is important as background to the story of Megan and John, their idyllic rural life seemingly perfect until the accidental death of their young son. This story creeps up on the reader as it becomes clear that John, though shattered at first by the tragedy, does finally move on, while Megan can't. She continues to live with the family dog in what may have initially seemed a beautiful place, but is a graveyard of memory that Megan won't leave. Spring's rebirth brings no peace, only one more part of the cycle of life and death, though to Megan it brings a little comfort.

In the award-winning story "Thomas and the Woman," Stone skirts magic realism, bringing to mind the late Matt Cohen's strange fables. Thomas suddenly discovers a woman in his house -- she simply takes over his life, changing the house and, eventually, the neighbourhood. Then, just as suddenly, she disappears. Thomas has neither any objection or great enthusiasm about this. The questions -- Was it a dream? A nightmare? Unrealized wish fulfilment? -- are left unanswered. All that is left are the fading colours of the picture the woman had put up on his bare kitchen wall.

Not all the stories are as successful, though there are no outright failures. "Autumn Trip East" may show that you can never go home again, but is flat, while "Double Exposures," about a lesbian woman who chooses a straight marriage -- another story of a woman drifting in life -- is a little pat.

The only slide into sentimentality is the final story, "Fragile Blue and Creamy White," about Alzheimer's destroying an elderly couple both emotionally and physically.

This collection reveals a major talent who presents her characters with a sharp eye and a deep love, and invites us to discover her world.


 


— Rory Runnells Winnipeg Free Press

More Reviews of this title

Prerequisites for Sleep

Jennifer L. Stone’s first short story collection, Prerequisites for Sleep, is steeped in memory. Perhaps this is what sleep sometimes requires, letting one’s mind linger over certain details of the past, key moments strung together progressing toward making sense of it all and finally, dreaming.

The weaker of these 13 stories –and there are only a few weak spots– rush through lives too quickly or tie events up neatly in an implied moral. Conversely, Stone is at her best when she pauses in a moment and doesn’t worry too much about explanations, like in “Billy,” the entirety of which is a single, taut scene, something we should probably look away from but can’t because it is as compelling as a train wreck.

Most of these stories are realist in style and focus on the struggles of the everyperson, the moments that define us whether we realize it or not. Stone does this well, often packing an emotional wallop in concise, direct prose.

And yet, some of the best stories in this collection are the rare ones that toy with the magical or introduce unexplained, perhaps inexplicable, events, such as in “Thomas and the Woman." Stone’s acuity with perspective shows in her use of protagonists of varied age, gender, education and income. A fractured fairytale –from the point of view of a not-so-wicked stepsister hard done by the medieval media– is another stand out and exhibits a playfulness that is absent from the slice-of-life pieces.

While varied, the collection is consistent in tone and style. Stone does not waste words, deftly showing us her character’s worlds in her short pieces. Prerequisites for Sleep may very well leave you wanting for more from this author.


— Chris Benjamin Atlantic Books Today

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