Sleep

A Novel

By: Honor Jones

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

ONE OF “THE BEST SUMMER READS OF 2025”–OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

“Incredibly moving."–Ann Patchett

“Propulsive and funny and heartbreaking.”—J. Courtney Sullivan

"An exceptionally moving novel. Jones takes her cues from writers like John Cheever, Richard Yates and Virginia Woolf."—The New York Times

"Profoundly beautiful."—NPR

From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.

Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously–the one she was born into, and the one she has made.

Ten-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family’s verdant backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of flashlight tag. Hers is a childhood of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes and a devoted best friend, but her family life requires careful maintenance. Her mother can be as brittle and exacting as she is loving, and her father and brother assume familiar, if uncomfortable, models of masculinity. Then late one summer, everything changes. After a series of confusing transgressions, the simple pleasures of girlhood, slip away.

Twenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her parents’ bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her in a game of hide and seek. She’s newly divorced and navigating her life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new lover. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush, punched out of time. Called upon to be a mother to her daughters, and a daughter to her mother, she must reckon with the echoes and refractions between the past and the present, what it means to keep a child safe, and how much of our lives are our own, alone.

Warm and generous, unflinchingly human, and ultimately joyful and empowering, SLEEP is about the cycles of motherhood and childhood, the cost of secrets and the burden of love, and what’s on the other side of silence: the world, rich in possibility.

©2025 Honor Jones (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“An exceptionally moving novel. Jones takes her cues from writers like John Cheever, Richard Yates and Virginia Woolf, all masters of the repressed and unsayable. She covers the same material—the resentments and traumas that smolder in families wrapped in a suburban idyll—and with similar delicacy and humor. But Sleep also introduces a measure of optimism and generosity I found refreshing.”—The New York Times

"Hypnotic... Jones crafts a nuanced and powerful exploration of a woman’s struggle to come to terms with her past… a masterpiece of carefully crafted perspective and tone…Margaret’s plight may feel tragic, but it’s transformed by sheer force of will—and Jones’s tempered prose—into something heroic, even hopeful."—The Washington Post

"Is it possible to have a childhood that is both picture-perfect and perfectly awful? And if so, how much of the baggage will you end up carrying 20-plus years later when you have children of your own? Honor Jones explores these questions in a quietly, profoundly beautiful new novel titled Sleep."—NPR

Best “literary fiction” book in years

This story is piloted by writing so exceptionally efficient it is similar to flying in a private jet. The ascent is so fast and precise, it surpasses the altitude of the average commercial planes. The caliber of writing and narration is as thrillingly dynamic as the plot. Enjoy! The best part of the ending is I’m now jumping straight back to the beginning for a second listen.

Gritty, realistic, soft and solid

Great narrator and narrative. True to life story about surviving sexual abuse. I appreciated the opportunity to hear the messy reality adequately described. Grateful for this author and for the story.