Sleep Has His House

Anna Kavan

1948

January, 2024

8.5/10

The book immediately begins with beautifully poetic prose in the expected style of Kavan. The “story” is equally typical of her: loose and drifting while being captivating and evocative… while having no idea what’s actually happening. Except for the short descriptions leading each chapter which provide perfectly minimal “explanations” which are also poetic and evocative.

A theme of distance and isolation is present. It seems that Kavan is expressing being an outsider, by "choice," and struggling with the idea of wanting to go her own way while simultaneously missing “the crowd.” She wants to be her own person but the cost is being alone. She's left not knowing how to be her own person, nor how to be "normal." She's lost and alone. And not happy. She is left with disdain for both humanity and society: people are ignorant and cruel for no reason. Thus, she withdraws from and renounces reality.

I would let Kavan's own words describe the book:

I had only learnt how to be friends with shadow; it might be too late to learn the way of friendship in the sun... They were different from myself although they spoke a similar language... They were traitors who had betrayed their dark and magical origin... When I discovered this my confidence vanished, I felt afraid and ashamed. It was a terrible disappointment, a dreadful humiliation.

And as for her rejection of the world:

But I had looked too long into dazzling and sunbright faces and stayed too long within the gates of day. My eyes had looked at something forbidden, and seen what they should never have seen, and now sight itself had gone out of them.

She had seen happiness, realizing it is not for her.

It’s Kavan at her best.