cover image Fall Asleep Forgetting

Fall Asleep Forgetting

Georgeann Packard, Permanent, $28 (260p) ISBN 978-1-57962-202-2

The novel opens in 1959 with a small piece about a wife leaving her indifferent husband to find independence and then jumps to the summer of 2001 and a trailer park in Long Island, home to an odd group of characters whose only commonality is their address. They include the park’s transvestite owner and her former stockbroker boyfriend, a couple with an impudent young daughter and a rocky marriage, and Claude, a park employee who falls unexpectedly into a sexual relationship with Sloan, the wife of local restaurant owner Paul, who is dying of cancer and planning his suicide. Paul observes the couple’s lovemaking from afar, remaining a silent witness to the relationship he has encouraged. As the affair continues and Claude’s passion for Sloan grows, the characters’ lives begin to collide. Slow moving and repetitive, especially in the sexual encounters between Claude and Sloan, the story, while good in theory, needs more developed characters to create any prolonged interest. (July)