Twelve year old Abbey is starting the school year at a new school once again. This time she is in Tennessee and her school is farther from her father's Army base than usual. Abbey has also managed to make a friend in happy and athletic Camille. She might even make friends with the artistic and cool Jiman. Then, September 11, 2001 comes. Abbey wakes up with her first menstrual cycle along with the news that will change her life forever. Once the news hits, Abbey's mother rushes to New York, her sister Rebecca is missing. Abbey is left with her father, her new body and a new world to navigate. As time passes, Abbey's father is deployed, and kids change their opinion about her at school, all the while her body keeps on schedule, slowly marking the months. Uniquely written in narrative verse, The Places We Sleep beautifully captures the thoughts of a preteen experiencing the trauma of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The writing immediately took me back to that day that connected so many of us across the country in fear. Just like Abbey, the day has been cemented in my mind. The verse perfectly captures the raw emotion at the time paralleled with coming of age. Through Abbey's eyes there is a deep look at the grief, depression and confusion that defined the months following the attacks. Between Abbey's Aunt, parents, and classmates there is a wide cross section of representation of how people reacted and were effected by many aspects of 9/11. Abbey shows that while an event may seem defining, the support of friendship and love can help you through. This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

This book was quite a conundrum for me to read. There were some major good points and some major bad points. Ultimately, I can’t say that I liked the book because it felt like a really big missed opportunity that failed to deliver on much of what it promised.

 

This book is told in two points of view and multiple timelines. Each chapter is titled with the narrator and the years it covers to make it easier to follow along, until the last chapter which was very confusing. It covers a span from the 70s to the 90s and discusses a lot of serious topics. It talks about the AIDS crisis in the gay community. It covers school shootings. It covers the new freak show of our era, trash TV. It covers public reaction to all of the above. It was a very ambitious novel and didn’t quite pull it off.

 

**Mild Spoilers Alert**

 

Our first narrator is Semi, which I thought was an innuendo until the author piped in that it’s pronounced like semi-truck and then I wasn’t really sure what it was supposed to be because I have always heard that pronounced with a hard I sound. But I’m getting off point. Semi was a great narrator. He was the former lover of Mattie M, back when he was a local politician and lawyer with his eyes on the mayorship of New York. I loved hearing about his love story with Mattie and I loved hearing about his perspective on the AIDS crisis. My only complaint is that I didn’t actually learn anything about Semi as a person. He told his story through the stories of his friends, So while I enjoyed his narration, I didn’t feel like I got to know him at all since he was hiding his truth behind his friends.

 

Cel is the narrator for much of the portion of the book that covers the school shooting and ensuing chaos, She is the publicist for the Mattie M Show. To be quite frank, I have no idea what she was doing in this novel. She didn’t have a single ounce of personality and rarely spoke more than a fragment of a sentence at a time. Her back story was confusing so I couldn’t even get emotionally involved in that aspect of her story. I also have no idea how or why the show hired her as a publicist. She doesn’t like the job and she doesn’t even seem to know how to do the job. Most of her story is making snarky one liners at other staff of the show, complaining about her job to her friends, and watching TV in bars. She doesn’t do anything. Then at the end of the book she decides to quit her job and become a stand up comedienne? Where the fuck did that come from? She went to a comedy club one time with a reporter and implied she had been there before, but she is not funny and we are given no indication that she ever wanted to do anything like that.

 

The first 125 pages of the book are largely useless. If I was the editor, I’d have scrapped them entirely. It is mostly Semi talking about his friends and Cel trying to avoid doing work. We only get into the meat of what the novel is supposed to be about about at page 130 and then it started to get awesome. After that point, I was completely invested and thought the novel was making some very profound points.

 

What I got from the novel is that television and news events are the new blood sport of our day. Whether we’re watching a trashy reality TV show, watching a play about some emotionally charged event, or watching news coverage on a tragedy. We are not actually watching the thing. We are not actually interested in the thing itself. It doesn’t matter how it begins. It doesn’t matter how it ends. The truth doesn’t matter either. The point is that we’re watching it. As the book says toward the end, we’re an audience, watching an audience, watching an audience. I was a little stunned at how profound I found this book based on how badly it began.

 

Then we got to the ending and it disappointed me again. In the end, the author decides to give us the truth. Give us the truth about what’s in the letters. Give us the truth of what the play was about. Give us the truth about Mattie M and Semi. I was so disappointed that I wanted to stop reading. We just spent approximately 200 pages telling the reader that the truth of these things was irrelevant. I was just another audience, watching an audience, watching an audience. So then if these things don’t matter, why are you insisting on telling me?

 

Maybe, in the end, I read too much into the book. Maybe the author didn’t actually intend to make any profound and philosophical points. Maybe she didn’t think she could resist giving me the final pieces of the puzzle. But, regardless, it damaged the book for me.

The book is finally starting to get interesting, those first 125 pages were an absolute slog! The story is finally getting somewhere and I am finding the reading is going quicker.

 

I am still tired of the author insisting on using archaic language for pedantic reasons. I get it, you have a degree. But people don't talk like this, it's weird.

In this book there are two narrators, telling two different stories.

 

Semi is the former lover of the subject of the book, and tells the story of New York from the eyes of a gay man in the 70s and 80s as the AIDS epidemic ravaged the LGBT world. He is a fantastic narrator and I love his portions. He is funny, engaging, sardonic and paints a vivid picture.

 

When we come to Cel, the present day publicist of the subject of the book. She lacks any personality whatsoever. I find myself getting very bored when she starts telling the story.