Sleepless Night

Sleepless Night / Margriet de Moor;
trans. from the Dutch by David Doherty
Toronto: Anansi International, 2019.
102 p.

This slim novel was a treat. A widow bakes in the depth of night while her lover lies sleeping upstairs (though I did wonder why he didn't wake up with the noise of baking, mixing etc or from the delicious smells...) She thinks of her life while she's insomnia baking; the story moves back and forth between the present, the recent past, and the more distant past to explore her lingering questions about her young husband's suicide - why he did it, and whether she can trust herself to find love again.

In this small book of night thoughts, shared while her bundt is baking, we learn quite a lot about the narrator. Her short marriage, just 14 months, was ended when her husband unexpectedly killed himself. She's questioning why, looking at their past together, trying to figure out reasons when you can't ask the dead for explanations. They met at university, and she goes over their university days and the group of friends that led to their meeting and marriage. This included his sister, who is now moving away from the family farm, where the widow has stayed despite herself. 

So many small interactions cross her mind, so many connections, and yet she can't decide where she stands in all of this. The man upstairs is her potential for the future, a man who has also been abandoned, though his wife simply left him. 

It's short, spare, but thought provoking. There are clues sprinkled throughout which an attentive reader may piece together to form their own conclusions as to why he might have done it. I know I have my own theories. Because of its size and the conceit of recollections in the middle of the night by one person, there isn't a great range of characterization but it is a wonderful study of one woman and her experience of marriage and loss, and the painful continuation of life nonetheless. 

I haven't read any other of Margriet de Moor's books, but she is a prolific and award winning Dutch writer, and I'm intrigued enough by this book to search out any of her other translated works.