Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed Sleepy Stories by Mario Levrero
Review of 'Sleepy Stories' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Warning: do not attempt to read this while tired and cozied up to your child at bedtime. You will wake up at 3 in the morning with a book on your face.
Very unusual project for a children's book but I think it is successful. The reading of this is more of a performance than the usual bedtime fare but the effect is wonderful. Levrero captures the feeling of being very very veeeeeery tired and trying to hold it together enough to tell a story while slipping in and out of a lucid state. All of the prose feeds back into that project, whether it is written in monotone or drifts in and out of ellipses and yawning interruptions. I'm not kidding when I say it is a struggle to read this and stay awake. And you can consider it a natural sleep aid for your child. You will both …
Warning: do not attempt to read this while tired and cozied up to your child at bedtime. You will wake up at 3 in the morning with a book on your face.
Very unusual project for a children's book but I think it is successful. The reading of this is more of a performance than the usual bedtime fare but the effect is wonderful. Levrero captures the feeling of being very very veeeeeery tired and trying to hold it together enough to tell a story while slipping in and out of a lucid state. All of the prose feeds back into that project, whether it is written in monotone or drifts in and out of ellipses and yawning interruptions. I'm not kidding when I say it is a struggle to read this and stay awake. And you can consider it a natural sleep aid for your child. You will both be in a different psychological state by the end of this book.
The illustrations are beautiful but they come a little late so either the book needed to be physically larger to make room for text and images or cropped differently. I get that it might be part of the book's project to have the listener first hear a story, then see an image of it in silence, but practically, especially at the beginning of the book, it helps to have something for a child to look at so they can follow along. This is a minor quibble because the project is just so interesting.