The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

Mira Jacob infuses her novel with a precise earnestness, maintaining enthusiasm throughout various decades of protagonist Amina's life. Jacob's rapid delivery of the dialogue, along with a variety of raised pitches and emphatic tones, cast Amina's dilemmas into a humorous light. As the story moves from the U.S. to India and back, Jacob's narration helps listeners make sense of the shifts in chronology. She also ensures that the Indian names and phrases are comprehensible. Any limitations of her narration stem from her writing style. Her sentences tend to be lengthy and winding, making them difficult for listeners to follow. M.R.

March 17, 2014
Toggling back and forth between the early 1980s and late 1990s, Jacob’s emotionally bountiful debut immerses us in the lives of Amina Eapen and her extended Indian-American family, who have lived in Albuquerque, N.Mex., since the late 1960s. In 1998, Amina, then age 30, works as a wedding photographer, having given up a promising photojournalism career after a single picture—a photo of a Native American activist jumping off a bridge—made her notorious. She moved to Seattle to distance herself from her overbearing parents, Kamala and Thomas, but returns home after learning that Thomas, a surgeon, has begun acting strangely. She plans to make it a short trip but decides to stay after her father is diagnosed with a brain tumor. This extended visit forces Amina to confront anew the death of her older brother Akhil, who committed suicide as a teenager, and to rekindle her romance with Jamie Anderson, whose sister was Akhil’s girlfriend. The author has a wonderful flair for recreating the messy sprawl of family life, with all its joy, sadness, frustration, and anger. Although overlong, the novel, through its lovingly created and keenly observed characters, makes something new of the Indian immigrant experience in America. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency.