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Book Reviewed by:The sweeping, intergenerational story of a Vermont family, from WWII to the dawning of the '60s - the most magisterial and moving novel of acclaimed author Jeffrey Lent's career.
Katey Snow, seventeen, slips the pickup into neutral and rolls silently out of the driveway of her Vermont home, her parents, Oliver and Ruth, still asleep. She isn't so much running away as on a journey of discovery. She carries with her a packet of letters addressed to her mother from an old army buddy of her father's. She has only recently been told that Oliver, who she adores more than anyone, isn't her biological father. She hopes the letter's sender will have answers to her many questions.
Before We Sleep moves gracefully between Katey's perspective on the road and her mother, Ruth's. Through Ruth's recollections, we learn of her courtship with Oliver, their marriage on the eve of war, and his return as a changed man. Oliver had always been a bit dreamy, but became more remote, finding solace most of all in repairing fiddles. There were adjustments, accommodations, sacrifices - but the family went on to find its own rhythms, satisfactions, and happiness. Now Katey's journey may rearrange the Snows' story.
Set in a lovingly realized Vermont setting, tracking the changes that come with the turning of the seasons - and decades - and signaling the dawning of a new freedom as Katey moves out into a world in flux, Before We Sleep is a novel about family, about family secrets, and about the love that holds families together. It is also about the Greatest Generation as it moves into the very different era of the 1960s, and about the trauma of war that so profoundly weighed on both generations. It is Jeffrey Lent's most accomplished novel.
While much of Lent's writing is rich with insights about the human condition, those who prefer a more fast-paced read may find this detailed examination of daily living less than a page-turner. Parts of the book might have benefited from a stiff edit to bring out the real nuggets of the story. But for those who do enjoy a gentle, slow amble through a character's psyche, Before We Sleep is perfect for cuddling up to under a blanket, speaking the best sentences out loud, savoring them a few sips at a time...continued
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(Reviewed by Zoë Fairtlough).
In Before We Sleep, Oliver, a World War II veteran, repairs fiddles for others to play folk and bluegrass tunes.
Fiddles and violins are essentially the same instrument (for more about this, read the 'Beyond the Book' for Black River), but the music that they produce can be classified into different categories. According to Strings magazine "violin is for classical and jazz [music] while fiddle is for folk, country and bluegrass." To my untrained ear, folk, country and bluegrass sound pretty similar. What is the difference?
Country music is the umbrella genre under which folk and bluegrass fall, although some argue that country and folk music carry on along parallel tracks. Music Genres List calls country music "a federation of ...
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The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
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Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger In The Kingdom
Unfailingly entertaining, profound, and elegantly crafted and written, Before We Sleep is Lent's most majestic novel to date, one of the finest books ever to come out of rural America.
