Book Review: 'The Sleepwalker' takes readers down a dark path

In the murky universe of sleep, some of us are pulled from our beds to carry out precise missions, such as dousing the cat with water to extinguish a fire that isn’t there. Or going for a midnight swim in the river or locating a lover — maybe even a stranger. They’re the perplexing actions of sleepwalkers, individuals certainly not awake but not exactly dreaming either.

So explains author Chris Bohjalian in the prologue of “The Sleepwalker.”

Then he blasts us with the opening line of chapter one: “Everyone in the country presumed that my mother’s body was decaying — becoming porridge — at the bottom of the Gale River.”

And we wonder: Is this a crime account? A mystery? Even a love story, given the prologue’s hints?

Yes, and more. It’s the tale of the beautiful, smart and presumed-drowned Annalee Ahlberg of Bartlett, Vermont, whose sleepwalking may have just killed her. It’s the story of her two daughters, 21-year-old Lianna and 12-year-old Paige, who seek answers. And it’s the narrative of Annalee’s professor-husband, Warren, who holds family secrets so close that we wonder what he really knows.

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We spend the next 284 pages trying to figure it all out. Bohjalian creates enough suspicion that even up until the last few pages we accuse nearly every character of being responsible for Annalee’s disappearance.

Along the way, Bohjalian educates us about the scientific explanations for sleepwalking. At first they seem merely interesting. Then Bohjalian leads us into a darker topic, sexual behavior in sleep (SBS). At that point, we realize that by his offering the matter-of-fact scientific evidence behind sleep disorders, Bohjalian has been slowly conditioning us to willingly enter a somewhat alarming and deviant place. The SBS angle only deepens the plot.

Using prologues to introduce each chapter and told in an unidentified narrator’s voice, we learn the differences between SBS and SRV, sleep-related violence: “The charges in SRV include murder and attempted murder. In SBS, there is rape. Sexual assault. Assault with intent to rape. Sexual misconduct. Indecent exposure.” The narrator then tells us that many if not most defendants are acquitted of crimes. “You take comfort in these odds if all you care about is acquittal. But someone has still been assaulted. Or raped. Or killed,” the mystery voice tells us.

The book is divided into two halves and well into the second one we still don’t know the identity of the reporter, although the narrative foreshadows the perfectly crafted surprise ending. We become sure that he or she knows exactly what happened to Annalee, even if we don’t yet know what happened.

“I wanted to tell someone — at least a part of me did,” the narrator admits. “But the bigger part of me couldn’t bring myself to admit it. To speak the truth aloud. To share what I thought I had seen. What I thought I remembered. …Yes, sleepwalkers usually recall very little. Unfortunately, I always recalled more than most.”

The story moves swiftly, with only a couple of wrinkles that challenge our willingness to believe this fiction. One is the oldest daughter’s maturity level. Lianna’s ability to think before acting makes her seem more like a 30-year-old than a college-aged individual who just lost her mother under questionable circumstances. Another head-scratcher involves a budding romance between Lianna and one of the investigators that many might view as risky and inappropriate.

In a way, though, this whole story is filled with inappropriate behaviors. The private and secretive stuff we experience in our dreams. The realities we wish we didn’t know and the fantasies we wish we did.

Eventually, Bohjalian reveals the family’s secrets. And because we want to keep them hidden, he succeeds in making us accomplices in a dark world we never knew existed.