The Sleepwalkers - Scarlett Thomas

The Sleepwalkers feels like a modern gothic thriller. It centres around a young honeymooning couple - Richard and Evelyn - who go to Greece and learn the tragic story of the guests who stayed in the luxurious villa before them.

The style of the novel is epistolary through the notes that RIchard and Evelyn write to one another, although the main narrative is told through Evelyn. And I think this is my biggest problem with the novel. The style is literary to the point of overreaching itself. It feels self consciously so and while that may be a clever nod to the failed playwriting career of Evelyn it makes for quite a struggle to get into the book itself. Ultimately, even if done for clever reasons, stilted and overwritten prose is a hindrance to the enjoyment of a novel. The other problem in having so much of the novel told through Evelyn is that she’s a deeply negative character. I’ve always enjoyed an unlikeable character but there needs to be a vitality behind it that this novel is lacking. With a postmodern ghost story there needs to be so much emphasis on the psychological - is there something sinister going on or are they mad - which means that if you’re continuously rolling your eyes at the narrative then you tend not to take any suspicions seriously and don’t fully become immersed with the slow decline of the character’s mental state. The book also opens on the breakdown of the honeymooners’ relationship meaning again that the pacing of the novel is off. You learn the reason for this too late and without the right amount of intrigue given to it so it appears as through it’s just an unmatched couple who don’t like each other, despite being recently married, are on holiday. Once you’ve pushed on to the heart of the novel there is a danger and a narrative pacing that salvages it but I just can’t imagine pushing through the amount you need to to get to the payoff of the truth behind the sleepwalkers.

Loved the idea of this book but I struggled to follow the flow. I enjoyed the main characters but found the development of relationships weak at points.

Evelyn and Richard are on honeymoon on a Greek island. The owner of the hotel they’re staying in is helpless / predatory Isabella.

Evelyn and Richard’s new marriage is already under threat thanks to an encounter at their wedding. And Evelyn is obsessed by the beautiful people on the island, while the story of the sleepwalkers haunts everyone around them.

The sleepwalkers were visitors to the island the year before, and died walking into the ocean during a storm.

Told through found documents (letters, transcripts, photos), this is a fractured story - a jigsaw of a narrative where not all of the parts fit, not all of the stories are complete. And the narrators are not so much unreliable as utterly untrustworthy. The sense of dread builds quickly and is complete pervasive.

As the story progresses, Evelyn and Richard’s (incredibly unhealthy) relationship pans out to a far wider thriller, involving all elements of the island.

I really enjoyed the style of The Sleepwalkers, the incomplete narrative was well done and felt a bit fresher than some similar crime narratives for its fragmented nature. I adored how imperfect and even unlikeable the characters were / could be - and I always think this is Thomas’s strength, she writes brilliantly difficult characters.

The tendrils of the narrative that loop back on themselves, where nothing can be trusted, and the layers of deception that are slowly uncovered was great. There is some great mirroring and foreshadowing, so many unresolved questions that you could spend a long time trying to follow or decode.

However, toward the end I felt The Sleepwalkers lost pace and became a little less tight. I know Thomas was not intending to give the reader answers necessarily, or wrap everything in a nice bow. Quite the opposite. But I did begin to lose a little interest in the last quarter. The storm abated and the intensity left with it.

In any event, I really appreciated the slightly experimental form. And I think I will always have a huge soft spot for the characters she creates.

It's been a while since I picked up a Scarlett Thomas, and I couldn't put this one down. A gripping read, I had no idea where it was going at any point, with multiple jaw-dropping points throughout.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6159695085

I think the word to describe this is hypnotic. The subject matter is dark - a relationship unwinding in a way that truly exposes all the worst sides of human nature - but I couldn't put it down and there was something about the brutal honesty from the two married couple narrators that was very compelling.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Net Galley for the ARC.

This is one of the few books that I've read that I feel completely neutral towards, and I think that's because I really can't tell if I enjoyed it or not. I was drawn to it because of its White Lotus vibes, and it definitely did not disappoint.

I loved the way this book reads; it is a collection of letters from different characters, some notes, an audio transcript, and some descriptions of photos. The characters were all complex, all unlikeable, and all flawed. I loved hearing from their different POVs, and I enjoyed how some parts of the letters were missing, leading you to have to infer what was taken out of the bundle of documents. However, there was so much that was left for the reader to figure out that it was kind of hard to understand what what going on at this hotel. Even when I finally got to the ending where the events were somewhat explained, I was still pretty confused and kind of disappointed at the reveal (even though it was sinister and shocking, as promised).

Although I found the plot confusing and almost hard to follow at times, I still really enjoyed the journey. This was a book that I was unable to put down, and I appreciated the subtle hints of Isabella's secrets as the tension grew throughout the book. I really enjoyed the way this was written; it made sense that you had to figure out for yourself what was going on at the hotel, as the characters also did. I liked hearing from each of them.

What an unusual book this was! It’s told in letters and transcripts and seems like an endless stream of consciousness, it definitely took some getting used to as I prefer short snappy chapters. Unlikable characters which I personally enjoy and a general sense of something being not quite right.

I now realise that some parts of the book/certain sentences are purposely left missing - I thought it was just a bad arc copy I’d got and hadn’t clocked this intentional mistake until I read other reviews.

A really hard book to describe but certainly unique so going with a 3 overall.

Twisted, reeling, uncovered emotive states unleased when reading this. An ordinary upturned and awash with suprise, so many layers to delve into. 4 stars from me very original. Thanks netgalley and publisher for arc.

I raced through this, it really gripped me. Great characterisation and enough twists to keep you wanting to know what’s going to happen next.

I raced through this pacy thriller in two days and it was a wild ride. I had no idea where the author was taking me, but I knew I wanted to follow…..⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a strange book. The story starts with Evelyn supposedly writing a letter to Richard, her husband. The letter is rambling and more like a stream of consciousness travelling back and forth in time. We learn that Evelyn detests her mother in law who has booked them a honeymoon a few months after their wedding on a small Greek Island in a tiny boutique hotel. Evelyn says her mother in law insisted the dates she has booked were the only ones available but on arriving at the hotel they find there was previous availability and that they are the only guests as the season is winding down. Evelyn immediately takes against the owner of the hotel, an attractive woman whom she thinks has designs on Richard and is being deliberately mean to her. Evelyn finds fault and sees micro aggressions everywhere and I started to think she was an unreliable narrator and a pita herself. A couple staying at the hotel , the "sleepwalkers" of the title drowned the previous year and as the letters unfold both Richard and Evelyn's back story and viewpoints the sense of menace andimpending doom increases.

At first I found the conceit of communicating through the letters frustrating but the story kept me weirdly reading on.

Scarlett Thomas always manages to take a genre and make it uniquely, unsettlingly hers! The Sleepwalkers is an uneasy, gothic White Lotus-esque thriller, packed with mostly unlikable but oddly compelling characters, cliffhangers, narrative sleights of hand and, of course, an atmospheric pressure-cooker situation on a Greek island. I loved how she still managed to weave in her trademark dark humour, unresolved wonderings, raw emotions, and the feeling that there is a mysterious solution just...tantalisingly....out of reach. Perfect for readers who like their thrillers with a Thomas-esque twist!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an ARC to review!

2 stars!

First off, how this was written, the language used to describing scenes etc was great, and I really got into the story.

However, I started to lose interest and found myself not entirely excited to pick it back up to find out what would happen. The book is bleak which I have no problem in reading but the premise of the book given describes a more exciting story.

If I remember correctly someone even said the story was funny but I'm at a loss with that. The characters themselves just hate one another, so you're reading them bitch about the other in letter form. But what stopped me from enjoying the story was the fact then when the narrator would change the 'voice' of the character would not, but that's just a thing that may have just bugged me. Along with some things left in the air, as the sleepwalkers part wasn't exactly answered for us.

just didn't hit me they way I wanted but may be a good read for someone else.

I blitzed through this in a couple of days. It was odd, but very compelling.

I find it hard to say whether I liked it or not to be honest, but it absolutely had my attention!

The story concerns a couple honeymooning on a Greek island. Their marriage is seemingly already doomed for reasons not yet clear. Meanwhile, another couple died in bizarre circumstances when staying at the same hotel the previous year. The wife is suspicious of the hotel manager, who seems to have the hots for her husband. And from there, it just gets crazier...!

The story is told in epistolary fashion, mainly via letters from the couple. This doesn't really ring true at all here - it would be utterly bizarre if anyone chose to write 100 page letters to each other in the circumstances, and more bizarre that they would act as a narrator, choosing to cover details that the other party already knew about. But hey, the technique was fun, so I can live with it.

Probably my biggest issue was with the way certain chapters would cut off mid-sentence, or a random part-sentence would appear in the middle of a passage. I (now) get that this is part of the literary device and that pages were meant to be missing, but for most of the book I thought it was more to do with my reading device and I had a glitchy ARC!

Anyway, the story bounces along in crazy but absorbing fashion until it crashes headlong into twisty secrets that are so horrific that they almost feel comical. I have to admire the writer for really going for it (!) but it felt a bit like she must have thought: "What's the most awful, horrible thing I could think to have happen?".

But like I said, this book had my attention throughout and was...get ready for the quote publisher... "unputdownable". Why, I'm not sure. Maybe because it felt like I was being given voyeuristic access into a very intimate dissolution of a relationship, full of sex, shame and guilt, told in a grotesque but hypnotic manner. I also enjoyed the main character of Evelyn - she wasn't supposed to be entirely sympathetic, but she felt like a human being, warts and all.

This book will be divisive. For me, it's certainly interesting, and even though it doesn't always hit the mark, I applaud the honesty and bravery from the author in really going for such a visceral and crazy story.

I loved how unique and multi-layered this story was, it was a fantastic literary puzzle. I always thought I didn’t mind ambiguous endings, however, this one pushed me a bit too far maybe. On the other hand, I will be thinking about this book for a long time and I think it would be a perfect one to buddy read so you can discuss it with someone.

I haven’t read anything like it before so that’s always a positive for me, and I thought the twists in this were handled really well. I’m just dying a little inside for some answers, but I understand why the author has chosen this method.

This one started slowly for me, and I wasn’t sold on it at all, especially as the initial viewpoint character is not at all sympathetic. And then suddenly I found myself at 40% and racing through the pages and reassessing my opinion of, well, everybody in the story. It’s very cleverly structured, and I think a reread armed with the knowledge of what happens would be very productive. Not necessarily an easy read, but a very good one.

I love mixed media books so finding out there was some of that sprinkled into this book I was delighted! The story is fun and exciting, and I can see the white lotus familiarity. A fun read!

This is a unique, non linear story with an engaging, atmospheric style. Towards the start I was swept into Thomas' world, and the Greek location is beautifully described however the book failed to hold my attention in the middle and I felt it lost pace and focus.

3.5 ⭐


The first part of this book has s much lighter tone, in fact I was very amused at the interaction between Evelyn and Isabelle.... but even then, there is a sense that somethings not right.
It takes a much darker turn as the book goes on, and things are revealed about our characters that are quite surprising.
There were a few times I had to check the last sentence to be sure I'd read it right.
A little bit strange, a lot entertaining.

4-5 stars rounded up

Evelyn and Richard are on a small Greek island for their honeymoon, but it’s the end of the season and a storm is brewing in more ways than one. Perhaps it’s that Isabella, the hotel owner, only has eyes for Richard or that Isabella wants to impress an American couple, or maybe that all anyone wants to talk about, is “the sleepwalkers” an married couple who drowned in the sea the previous year. Perhaps too, it’s that the fates do not align for Evelyn and Richard, the omens certainly aren’t good. This fascinating novel is chiefly written in letter form which heightens the mystery and suspense.

I knew I’d enjoy this as I love the original and creative way that Scarlett Thomas writes and have greatly enjoyed her other books. This is a multilayered novel, those layers cleverly revealing themselves a little bit at a time. There’s tension and strain from the get go, it’s stormy, moody, troubled, and ominous from the beginning. There are off notes, some that are disturbing, it’s odd, strange and weird at the Villa Rosa and you sense that immediately. This is further heightened by some baffling incidents, there are games being played here, and it seems that Evelyn and maybe Richard are not privy to the rules. The tone becomes increasingly foreboding, there’s danger in the air, and it feels prophetic, and the building storm intensifies the situation, which certainly escalates.

I love the way the author tells the story as the letters allow some suspenseful cliffhangers and it becomes clear that there is a very big secret which is tantalising. The storytelling becomes increasingly dark as these secrets start to bubble to the surface, and they’re bad, very bad and it all starts to make awful sense. Both main characters become honest and there’s a rawness to it. It’s also interesting that the reader knows more than Evelyn does at several points through Richard’s letters. . There is some powerful imagery which adds to the intensity and I enjoy the occasional use of dark humour. The setting on the Greek island is fantastic and the end of season atmosphere along with the weather allows the author a lot of scope.

What of the characters? It’s fair to say they are not easy to like, but what is also true is that they are very complex and exceptionally well portrayed. Although the letters do change my perspective, especially on Evelyn as the realisation dawns that others have few merits.

Overall, this is a unique, twisty and very different story, it’s certainly an enigmatic puzzle which I thoroughly enjoy.

With thanks to NetGalley, and especially to Simon and Schuster, for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.