Sleepless

A brief presentation of ”Sleepless” (”Sömnlös” 2000, in Dutch ”Slaapeloos” by De Geus)

Savanna Brandt, 36, is having major problems sleeping. She is on her sixty-fourth night of insomnia and her world is slowly falling apart. Sharing an apartment in Stockholm with her brother Sam keeps her up to date with his endless love affairs, reminding her of a love life of her own which is long gone. Her work filing governmental documents in a library while trying to finish her Ph.d., seems to leed nowhere. The mourning of her dead son keeps her social life at a minimum.

Meanwhile she is getting frightening e-mail from someone with an accelerating contempt for women. Who is threatening her and why? What is it that she has overlooked from her past? Could it be connected to a memory from when Savanna was eleven: seeing a battered woman being carried out of an inn? She gets a helping hand from the son of the superintendent who once was in charge of the case, which makes eleven years of celibacy hard to maintain.

In futile attempts to keep the fear and panic under control, she organises her binders. Most of these consist of her Ph.d. research on the British author Elisabeth Brown, who died a peculiar death in London 1972 after a widely debated life. Savanna is enchanted by the bold voice in Elisabeth’s novels and person. She decides to give Elisabeth´s unscrupulous biography author Ruth Bell a hard time, by finding new revealing facts about Elisabeth´s life and death.

Slowly the two stories are being woven together.

Behind the scenes – the writing process

With ”Sleepless” I had decided to let the novel take its own turns, without me knowing where it was going. After 5 years of writing ”Syster min” I was exhausted and didn´t want to think that much ever again! I had some things planned ahead for ”Sleepless”, since it is two stories that are being woven together, but not much. It was great fun to see what happened if I just let things solve themselves while writing. I was actually writing one day, thinking the next and then writing again. The most odd solutions came at hand, things I would never rationally had come up with otherwise.

I learned a few new things on caracters, among other things to switch gender roles. Jack is a mix of all the sympathetic men I have met in my life, my own husband included, and I find they are seldom described. Quite aware I gave Jack what is commenly known as ”female caracteristics” (that is typically women!”), while Savanna got to get the male ones. It was more fun to write that way and you get rid of some of the worst clichés, hopefully, and maybe come closer to reality. The result? Well, women loved Jack…