Leave Your Sleep

If only we would take the time to look a little closer, delve a little deeper, when ordinary life goes awry, we might find the world more strange and unexpected than we ever could have imagined. . . .The twelve stories of Leave Your Sleep concern sex and death, love and loss. Russell allows his characters to disappear, slip into alternative realities, or re-write their own histories. They find they are able do the most extraordinary things, even though they may not immediately realise it. And who is in control of their actions, or of those around them?In 'An Unconventional Exorcism', why is a young woman who claims to talk to the dead so shocked when her aunt comes back to haunt her? In 'The Red Rose and the Cross of Gold', when an engineer in a crumbling city stumbles upon a messy murder, who cleans up afterwards? And in 'Mathilde', what do lovers do when everyone is against their relationship? These and other questions are explored in Russell's beautifully evocative prose.

If only we would take the time to look a little closer, delve a little deeper, when ordinary life goes awry, we might find the world more strange and unexpected than we ever could have imagined. . . .The twelve stories of Leave Your Sleep concern sex and death, love and loss. Russell allows his characters to disappear, slip into alternative realities, or re-write their own histories. They find they are able do the most extraordinary things, even though they may not immediately realise it. And who is in control of their actions, or of those around them?In 'An Unconventional Exorcism', why is a young woman who claims to talk to the dead so shocked when her aunt comes back to haunt her? In 'The Red Rose and the Cross of Gold', when an engineer in a crumbling city stumbles upon a messy murder, who cleans up afterwards? And in 'Mathilde', what do lovers do when everyone is against their relationship? These and other questions are explored in Russell's beautifully evocative prose.