"Remarkable Novel" About Drug Addiction by Down Under Author

Sleep before Evening
By Magdalena Ball
BeWrite Books
2007, ISBN 978-1-904492-96-
$17.99
286 pages

Reviewed by Bob Williams


Sleep Before Evening is a first novel by Magdalena Ball, author of The Art of Assessment and a collection of poetry, Quark Soup. She is also creator and editor of the Web’s premier literary site, The Compulsive Reader.

Mari and her mother Lily form the nucleus of the novel. Mari is a brilliant, but limited, high school student. She has a scholarship to NYU and is an accomplished pianist. Her father faded away from his family early in her life and she has found a substitute in her grandfather, Eric.

Her mother, Lily, has remarried. She is an artist, subject to mood swings that are exhausting to Russ, her husband, and to Mari. Lily in fact drives Russ away by the jealousy that torments her.

Eric has a stroke that is severe enough to leave him unconscious and without brain activity. His doctor recommends the removal of life support. Mari is opposed to this and insists at least that she be made part of the decision respecting her grandfather. Lily and Russ agree to this, but decide without her and Eric is gone before Mari knows what has happened.

In an already difficult home Mari now experiences the extremes of alienation from her mother. Accustomed to visit the city at her pleasure, Mari begins to visit it more frequently. She meets Miles, a young street musician and, cast off and vulnerable, begins a relationship with him. A large part of the book becomes concerned with sex and drugs and – well, not rock and roll exactly – blues.

Ball is very good at showing the shabby musicians that alternate between hopes and disappointments. Miles, the harmonica player, and Cath, the singer, and the other band members lead lives of noisy desperation with a heavy dependence on drugs. In this environment Mari becomes addicted. The needs of her addiction take her from one life-blighting experience to another and she deliberately overdoses as she sits in the rain, abandoned by everyone, under some bushes in a park.

She is found. Doctors save her life and she enters a rehab unit. Reunited with her mother, who draws upon an unsuspected source of maturity, Mari lives through the rigors of rehab. Home once more, she finds that there are still many unresolved problems between her and Lily.

This is a remarkable novel, not one detail of which rings false. The setting is New York City and one of its suburbs and the time is the Reagan years. Ball has achieved the remarkable in recovering this particular time past and the drive of the narrative makes this a compelling and an exciting book.
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About the reviewer: Bob Williams has been collecting books all his life, and has done freelance writing, mostly on classical music. His principal interests are James Joyce, Jane Austen and Homer. His writings, two books and a number of short articles on Joyce, can be accessed at: http://www.grand-teton.com/service/Persons_Places

A Well Written Insight Into Human Suffering

Title: Sleep Before Evening
Author: Magdalena Ball
ISBN: 978-1-904492-96-2
Page count: 296
Format: paperback
Release Date: 24th July 2007
Available: http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Before-Evening-Magdalena-Ball/dp/1904492967/


Review by Warren Thurston,
owner of Pentales


Sleep Before Evening is Magdalena Ball’s debut novel. It is a beautifully crafted piece dealing with rejection and betrayal. Those of us who have felt that someone we loved deeply betrayed us, will form an immediate bond with the main character.

Marianne is a vivacious nineteen year old, full of life and a brilliant scholar. She is at the peak of her powers when life decides it will test her character. Eric, her much loved grandfather and mentor, is suddenly struck down by a stroke. His death begins a series of events that takes Marianne into a world of darkness, filled with drugs and depression.

Hurting to the core about the loss of Eric, and the fact that she was denied the chance to say goodbye, Marianne hates the world. She also starts to hate herself and seeks solace in the arms of Miles. He is a struggling musician who for a time is the maestro who conducts her life.

Lily, Marianne’s mother, also has her own demons eating at her. She is so wrapped up in her struggle to find happiness and fulfillment, that she cannot see what is happening to her daughter. It is a flaw that many parents are guilty of, not through an act of selfishness, but one brought on by their own struggle to survive.

Confused and angry Marianne deteriorates to the stage where fantasy, reality and pain are so intermingled within her, that she loses contact with her real self. She was entering the stage of what the noted British psychiatrist Hall called, drifting back to the time before you are born. It is a stage along the path of mental recovery, where one’s mind is in an infantile state, as it retreats from the hurt it finds itself in. Then when it feels strong enough it comes forward again, out of the darkness and into the light. This usually brings with it a positive change in an individual, making them mentally stronger and enhancing their creativity.

This is a good story that makes the reader feel the highs and lows of Marianne as if they are their own. It reminds me of the style adopted by the Russian writer Dostoyevsky. He had the ability to get the reader to feel exactly what his characters felt; a gift Magdalena ball has too.

Sleep Before Evening is a well written insight into human suffering. The author shows an in-depth knowledge of how to hold readers attention, and make them eager to know more. This is a debut novel that shows the author has many more novels inside her, which will provoke strong emotions in readers of her work.