BBefore the reader begins reading Scarlett Thomas’s wonderfully captivating new book, it is clear that this is a story of disaster, of which there are actually several versions, and the contents page is the documentary evidence. Letters, audio transcriptions, drawings, photographs, pages torn from hotel guestbooks, and confessions. “The Sleepwalker” is a scrapbook of disaster, tattered, burnt, and bloodstained.
As the story begins, Richard and Evelyn are honeymooning on the Greek island of Katos at Villa Rosa, a luxury hotel run by Isabella, a mysterious and bohemian young widow. The door to Villa Rosa is not locked. Things are pretty idyllic for now, but there’s a squalid refugee camp on the other side of the island, and the newlyweds’ relationship is clearly fraught with dark sexual secrets and lies from the beginning.
Evelyn is our main narrator through a series of letters she writes to her husband and mother-in-law, describing their marriage as “cursed” on page one. The couple arrive in Katos with Richard’s best friend Paul (Evelyn clearly cares more about Paul than her husband) and his “rubber sex doll” girlfriend Beth. Add to that social discord. Richard is a public school City trader, and Evelyn is her parents’ housekeeper turned actor-turned-screenwriter. And the fact that Evelyn’s writing career is in the doldrums. Even without a huge storm in the forecast, we can be prepared for disaster.
Villa Rosa also quickly turns out to be far from the paradise it is advertised as. The quirky and charming décor hides sinister clues, and the local “helps” — lewd gardener Kostas, downcast Christos, and barefoot dog Hamza — are evasive at best. It’s becoming more and more public. It is hostile and the promise of a simple life is a lie. Communication is cut off, doors are locked “for our own protection” and conversations are monitored.
Richard and Evelyn aren’t the first couple to hit the rocks at Villa Rosa either. The sleepwalkers of the novel’s title were two previous guests, Mr. and Mrs. Border Kearney. After he found God, he was “troubled.” She was researching a travel piece. According to local reports, he went into the sea in his sleep and drowned the year before the main story begins.
Evelyn then wrote a screenplay based on the story of a couple in which Isabella (the main reason for Isabella’s free-spiritedness was the fact that she was breathlessly flirting with Richard without wearing any underwear) drowned. She learns that a Hollywood producer is coming to see her. When the weather turns, a toxic brew of resentment and terrible secrets boils over. And it’s not just beaches that are being washed away.
Thomas is a writer who provides just about every satisfaction a reader could ask for. The plot structure is original yet demanding without being burdensome. She has an unerring ability to evoke atmosphere. Even on the first page, the tension on the island is palpable. The novel is also a wickedly funny satire on privileged oblivion. When his sleepwalking wife visits the island’s refugee camp, she says it reminds her of Glastonbury, where the babies weren’t crying. Evelyn said on the phone with producers. When I told her she was in the hospice parking lot, this was the woman’s reaction. She said, “Oh my god, how fascinating.”
Fundamental to Thomas is an unparalleled dexterity and subtle skill in crafting characters, from the manipulative Isabella to the weak, snobbish and spoiled Richard, who clings to salvation with a modicum of honest instinct. . But it is Evelyn who underpins the novel’s credibility, and she is a masterful creation. She is an overthinker, and she also tends to be cunning and blurt out the truth. She is a zigzag, a backslider, running away from her own damage, lustful, and hopelessly thwarted in her capacity for love. As a writer, Evelyn is also an ultimately unreliable narrator, and Thomas makes her evasions and exaggerations visible, giving them deceptive power, and ultimately leading her to a halting yet revealing revelation. You have to perform the frighteningly difficult trick of leading. Clever, emotionally resonant, packed with surprising and dark developments, and actually quite entertaining, this is fiction that’s roaring on all cylinders.
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