In Asleep, Banana Yoshimoto offers snapshots of the lives of three women as they come to terms with loss, facing the affliction of a peculiar sleepfulness triggered by the death of a loved one.

One, mourning a lost lover, finds herself sleepwalking at night. Another, who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake. A third finds her sleep haunted by another woman whom she was once pitted against in a love triangle.

Composed of three novellas, Night and Night’s Travellers, Love Songs and Asleep, the novel is linked sparsely by themes of loss, sleep and transformation. Each woman’s story is dreamy and sombre with that gentle quality of introspection that Yoshimoto has come to perfect.

Being faced with their own unique forms of loss, the women in these stories come to exist in this melancholic purgatory, the liminal space that binds sleepfulness and wakefulness together. They are encompassed by this space manufactured by grief, and the point of the character-driven narrative is to accompany each woman as they come to terms with their grief and escape this place in-between life and death/sleep and wakefulness.

Overcoming grief then, is somewhat of an awakening; a transformation of the self. This profound idea, combined with the union of sparsity and magical realism that Yoshimoto always weaves into her work creates an inexpressible comfort. To me, it felt as if through crafting these ambiguous characters that almost blend into each other, Yoshimoto offers the promise of hope that grief can be overcome by just about anyone.

The impact of grief is no doubt powerful enough to fabricate a lens through which we come to find ourselves in a world coloured by our loss. This novel offers a deep contemplation on coming to terms with death, and the nuances within the relationships of women. While it isn’t necessarily easy to awaken from the slumber of grief, this reflective work exposes the reader to the possibility of transformation in the gentlest of ways.

However, although the exploration of its themes was artfully written, the stories and characters just weren’t as memorable as I thought they would be. While I love Banana Yoshimoto’s style of writing and ability to explore impactful themes through the lens of different pockets of fiction, Asleep did not live up to the promise of enchanting and mystical surrealism in its description. It felt a little sparser than the other Yoshimoto books I’ve read, but I still see this as an attempt to encourage a deeper contemplation.

There’s no doubt that Asleep is a beautiful, powerful and impactful piece of work, however, the lack of connection I felt to it compared to Yoshimoto’s other works like Lizard and Kitchen was a little disappointing.

Night and Night’s Travellers ★★
Love Songs ★★★
Asleep ★★★