The Sleep Garden [Paperback]

In an underground apartment building called the Burrow--essentially purgatorytwilight souls inhabit the space between life and death. Interwoven with their stories are those of inhabitants of the living world: a retired sea captain, a psychotic former child actor (possibly the sea captains illegitimate son?), and the technicians who monitor the Burrow, making sure its occupants have a constant supply of oxygen and food. Through all of their stories, and the ways in which their lives, past and present, intertwine, Krusoe creates a poignant story about what constitutes a life, what remains when we die, and what we possibly carry with us into the next world.?Ultimately, Jim Krusoes soulful characters inhabit an underground warren of apartments called The Burrow, but unlike Kafkas menacing fable of that name, these twilight existences are benignly monitored by aboveground technicians.?Gone is Kafkas paranoia-inducing menace, and now for our delectation is Krusoes fractious and blackly comedic fable for our technology-entombed time.Jim Krusoes excellent The Sleep Garden offers a deceptively fragile, but surprisingly durable and elastic, mosaic of voices. The books inhabitants exist in that liminal space between life and afterlife, yes, but more so between the fostering of banal ambitions and the awakening of eternal regrets.