HOUSE OF SLEEP

In this debut gothic novel, a woman attempts to discover the meaning of her dreams.

Lynn is fascinated by her dreams, though her engineer fiance, Mike, is quick to dismiss them: “Dreams are just your brain sorting through irrelevancies, determining what goes in which folder, what gets tossed.” Because of his skepticism, she doesn’t bother to tell him when she dreams of him dying in a flash of splinters and glass. Then, the next day, Mike is killed in a car accident. Despite her training—Lynn is a therapist at a mental health clinic—she can’t get over her sense of grief, even after a year passes. A friend recommends she attend a retreat at the House of Sleep, a Victorian mansion that serves as a center for dream remembrance and interpretation. It is run by a guru known as DM, the Diving Man, a figure with a mysterious past who possesses a secret government drug called the One that serves as the basis for his treatment. There, Lynn becomes one of his Sleepers, as the community of monklike students is known. It is also there that she meets Daniel, a haunted young man in whom Lynn—and DM—quickly takes an interest. Lynn and Daniel have an unexpected connection: He may be just the person she needs to finally put her sorrow to bed. But first they may have to contend with whatever it is that DM has planned for them. Kelly’s prose is wonderfully moody, as here when Daniel comes to after an attempted exorcism by his Christian father: “Daniel did wake up—gradually, out of vaporous, ghostly dreams about dying—and lay awhile collecting evidence that night had come. His face was stiff and swollen with water—the best and failed effort of his father’s god to oust the demon.” The author succeeds in creating a creepy, paranoid atmosphere in which readers will often be left to wonder just what is true, what is false, and what is dangerous. DM is a captivating villain, though at times his monologues border on camp. There are moments when the plot drags, and the book is perhaps 50 pages longer than it should be. Even so, Kelly has created an indisputably original—and mind-bending—story using some classic gothic elements.

A cerebral and inventive tale exploring the power of the subconscious.