Sleep Has His House is closer to a work of art than a novel. Not necessarily in the meaning of greatness (although it is very impressive) but rather in that concept and artistry supersede plot and storytelling. It is a book suffused with a sense of being autobiographical, about a young girl called B who we suppose is Kavan herself as a child.

Each chapter consists of two parts - a dichotomy between reality and B's inner world. The italicised beginnings are quite matter-of-fact and brief synopses of particularly significant events in B's life. They are followed by burgeoning, vivid interpretations of these events in a surreal and exaggerated realm. Kavan's writing comes into its own in these second parts: her imagination and use of language to illustrate the subconscious responses are masterful and it is remarkable how current and accessible the writing feels despite being written in 1947. In particular, Kavan expertly takes idyllic scenes and slowly degrades then into their exact opposites (or vice versa) - evoking dark, haunting imagery that leaves you sorrowed by the experiences B/Kavan had to face so young.

I think this was a good place to begin my reading of Kavan - it was a great advert of her talents and I'm really interested to see how they translate to a more traditional narrative. For lovers of descriptive, well-considered prose I heartily recommend Sleep Has His House. For those that prefer a stronger narrative element, perhaps her other novels are a better place to start. It also brought to mind 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath and the work of Janet Frame - so if you are fans of those, I predict Kavan will be up your street too. 4/5 ( )

Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place.

Holy fuck.

There's really no way to begin to write about this book; rather, it must be experienced on its own terms—in the nighttime logic Kavan employs to render the visions and logic of dreams in prose that is as erudite and learned as it is nightmarish and downright bizarre.

To call Kavan's style in Sleep Has His House "surreal" is to miss the mark. As Kavan herself states in a introductory passage to the text: "No interpretation is needed of the language we have all been speaking since childhood and in our dreams." The images, scenes, confusions, and even the melancholy found in the narrator B.'s rejection of the world of light and all that it entails is familiar to all writers—and certainly to all dreamers: "The dream closes in to the central dead spot..."

Kavan clarifies that "for the sake of unity a few words before each section indicate the corresponding events" in terms of "real" temporal time. And these intercalary chapters are so eerily reminiscent—not in their tone or treatment, but in their almost predictable and perfect placement—of the intercalary chapters in Virginia Woolf's The Waves as they make the two texts companion shadow pieces of sorts. Whereas Woolf is concerned with plumbing the depths of consciousness of six main characters, eventually absorbing all of these "moments of being" replete with images, sense perceptions, and subjectivized linguistic nuances, Kavan goes even deeper. Focusing on B. rather than a wider chorus of characters as does Woolf, Kavan's world is already hermetic; indeed, in eschewing all light and concentrating instead on the darkness—and the logic even a pitch-black room holds for an individual's conscious connections—allows her to descend several layers below the unconsciousnesses for which Woolf's own text is so highly praised.

But Kavan's deep unconsciousness is not one of pure despair, nor are the images and temporal connections so subjective to prevent the reader entrance into this world of shadows and utter darkness. Because we all share this language we have "been speaking since childhood and in our dreams," the connections become clearer as the reader works to patch together the at times overload of senses with which Kavan bombards him or her. In essence, the logic of the nighttime with which she is concerned is one that is deeply familiar, one that is hardly uncanny despite how it might feel upon first reading Sleep and stumbling over the opening sections.

The most rewarding part of Kavan's prose is her unique ability to blend reality and fantasy, truth and fiction, and the public and the personal. While Sleep Has His House can be, and likely has been read, as a private document too insular to be deciphered by a reader, I would counter this rather strongly. However, like Woolf's The Waves, Kavan's Sleep is a work that requires a familiarity with her prior work, style, treatment, and especially as it evolved over time to the subjectivized and almost inverted world one sees in books like Ice, but which are shattered even more in works like Sleep.

We know a lot about Freud's influence on Woolf's life and work, and The Waves' slow descent into several layers of consciousness—and its focus on deep unconsciousness—is one meagre testament to that debt. Kavan does reference Woolf's Orlando once in Sleep Has His House, making the connection between the two seem a valid one to draw here. Kavan also appears to know her Freud (although perhaps from the wrong side of the couch, which is not to say insights cannot be offered by the analysand any more than they can by the analyst), and, if Freud had lived, I'm certain he would have learned many a thing about the unconscious and its many levels; subjectivized sensory perceptions and how these can somehow be shared or at least understood by individuals from entirely different circumstances; and the formative years of childhood from a book like Kavan's.

We are often scared of examining the depths, but with the right guides—e.g., Dante's Virgil guiding the way through the Inferno—we have many lessons to learn about ourselves and the dark world we tend to ignore, whether out of fear, anxiety, trepidation, or because we have been conditioned to think that the world of light is the only one that matters. Explore the depths, then; do not be afraid of the darkness. You will remain intact, albeit changed irrevocably: "survivor of all voyages and situations... I." The "I" will survive, if you trust in Kavan's journey, as well we all should. ( )

This wasn't an easy read. At times I got utterly lost as to what was happening in the dream sequences & often couldn't find their meaning. I think these sequences serve to illustrate her state of mind during various parts of her life, a biography of feelings rather than details. But, regardless of the fact that she was a very talented writer, I felt most of the time like I was wading through random prose which really amounted to nothing & made little sense. I don't suppose the fact she was a long term heroin addict helped translate her ideas to those of us not so illuminated, or maybe the fact I'm not a fan of fantasy just made it too hard for me to penetrate. As I said, she was very talented as a writer, & I did like the approach in theory. But I just felt I was reading purely to get to the end, & at times read whole chunks without digesting any of it. I preferred her more structured work. ( )

Narcosis, or deep sleep therapy, is a psychiatric technique where a patient is drugged into sleep for an extended period of time (days or even weeks). It is a questionable practice that led to a number of scandals over patient deaths. Anna Kavan experienced such therapy for her own clinical depression. Whether the style of this book is a direct result of narcosis therapy is something we probably can't know for sure, although I think it's safe to theorize that it played a role. The book may also have been influenced by her long-term heroin use, which kept Kavan in a waking cocoon that enabled her to continue living, for a time at least.

Described as a memoir, Sleep Has His House charts a loosely connected course through dream-time in order to tell the story of an isolated childhood and adolescence leading into a full-scale retreat from society. In between the dream sequences are more straightforward bits of prose that help to maintain the tenuous chronology. There are also recurring characters, including Kavan's mother, that serve as anchors within the dream texts.

I read most of this book on a series of nights, lying in bed, as sleep slowly curled into my consciousness. I think this affected my reading of the book, to the point where I didn't want to pick it up in daylight. I also think it enriched my dreams, although I did not specifically dream of the book. But I did experience something new in one dream: in speaking to someone, I made a reference to a place I have only been to in my dreams; to my knowledge, it does not exist in waking life. I woke the next morning elated.

This book is said to be a Surrealist experiment, although I don't think Kavan identified herself with Surrealism. To me, labeling it as such cheapens Kavan's achievement with the book, but then again I hate labels in general. I think it's better to approach the book without any preconceived notions. Consider reading it at night, as your eyes slowly begin to close and you loiter at the edge of dream life. ( )

I first heard about this book while studying Anais Nin. Nin mentions a few books written by women that she finds profoundly inspiring. This book was one of them. Each chapter is prefaced by a small bit of a memory or reality in italics, that is then followed by something a bit like a dream. The language of dreams, the nocturnal and the emotionally unbalanced mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Kavan

http://redmood.com/kavan/