AustLit

'Catherine Cole’s new novel Sleep revolves around an extended family of women and the ways in which they manage intergenerational trauma. The protagonist, Ruth, struggles with issues of abandonment. She has to deal with the trauma of her mother, Monica, which had been passed down to Monica through her father, a survivor of the Second World War. He returned from the war a troubled and restless man, estranged from his family and the Yorkshire landscape of his childhood. He relocated the family from Yorkshire, where Monica had grown up, to London where they continued to move from house to house, with Monica and her sister always homesick for Yorkshire. Although they had never lived there, Monica’s daughter, Ruth, and her sister, Antoinette, remained deeply attached to the Yorkshire landscape of their mother’s childhood, and to the people who inhabited it, especially their Aunt Elsie.' (Introduction)