The Sleeping Father [Paperback]

At once tragic and madcap, Sharpe's second novel offers an acidly funny portrait of a "diminished nuclear unit" coping with its patriarch's pharmacologically induced stroke. Divorced, depressed Bernard Schwartz is taking Prozac, but the accidental ingestion of another antidepressant lands him in a coma. His adolescent children, the conflicted and caustically witty Chris, and the serious, earnestly spiritual Cathy, must muddle through their father's helplessness in this character-driven tale. In one of the novel's best scenes, Chris, devastated but true to his trademark hostile sense of humor, adorns his unconscious father's face with drawn-on "make-up," which includes rosy cheeks and a Hitler mustache. It's moments like this-when fear induces laughter, and humor invites pathos-that make this tonally skillful novel dazzling but also difficult. Sharpe (Nothing Is Terrible; Stories from the Tube) shows little mercy for his characters; even as he lovingly catalogues their every idiosyncrasy, he dumps on them one humiliating circumstance after another. Upon waking from the coma, Bernard is physically and mentally compromised, and Chris, who's in charge of his rehabilitation, takes advantage of this role reversal with mixed results. He dresses his father in age-inappropriate clothing and openly mocks Bernard's attempts at readjustment-but he's dutiful, too, and Bernard takes solace in some of his unorthodox teaching exercises, like the naming of trees. The family dynamics culminate in unexpected and dramatic ways at the novel's end, a needed jolt after some mild plot stagnation sets in midway. Readers of alternative and literary fiction should appreciate Sharpe's clearly drawn characters and his thoughtful, if withering, examination of the contemporary hierarchies of family and authority.
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""Matthew Sharpe's vision of American life is fresh, original, and very funny, funny in the way that occasionally makes you sob, original in the way that makes you look at everything--hospitals, suburban shrubs, grousing, sad-faced families--in a new and kinder light."

"The Sleeping Father begins with a divorced dad who inadvertently combines two incompatible antidepressant medications, goes into a coma, has a stroke, and emerges with brain damage. His teenaged son and daughter--Chris, the protagonist of the book, and Cathy--inherit money, from their grandfather and decide to rehabilitate their father on their own. Minus an adequate father, the children decide to create one, taking on a host of difficulties and opportunities. Chris tries everything from sex to capitalism in his search for guidance toward adulthood. Cathy, finding her secular jewishness lacking the provision of a benign and divine Father, turns to Catholicism for solace and meaning. In this novel, the American family emerges as a microcosm of larger social institutions: moms and dads are in-home teachers, priests, presidents, and CEOs. In focusing on the Schwartz family in crisis, Sharpe addresses the larger crises of faith and authority in contemporary American life.

Matthew Sharpe was born in New York city during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He grew up in a town in Connecticut not unlike Bellwether, the imaginary town in The Sleeping Father. He's held various jobs: bicycle messenger, door-to-door seafood salesman, carwasher, receptionist. Shortly after graduating from Oberlin College, in Ohio, he went to to New York and worked in the magazine production business for ten years. During this time he got a masters degree in writing from Columbia University and began teaching writing in various public schools in New York. He has also taught at various universities. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.