{"id":34311,"date":"2014-08-21T09:42:15","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T13:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=34311"},"modified":"2014-08-21T11:26:15","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T15:26:15","slug":"the-sleepwalkers-guide-to-dancing-by-mira-jacob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-sleepwalkers-guide-to-dancing-by-mira-jacob\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sleepwalker&#8217;s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/08\/Sleepwalkers-Guide-to-Dancing.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-34312\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/08\/Sleepwalkers-Guide-to-Dancing-529x800.jpg\" alt=\"Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing\" width=\"529\" height=\"800\" \/><\/a>Probably\u00a0my brain is showing its advancing age, but I can&#8217;t remember the last time I stayed up half the night to finish a book unless I had an impending deadline (procrastinate? me?!). While I started\u00a0<em>Sleepwalk<\/em>-ing in daylight stuck in the ears (debut novelist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mirajacob.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Mira Jacob<\/a> is also her own <em>very<\/em> best narrator \u2013 going audible is absolutely recommended!), by midnight I couldn&#8217;t listen fast enough and ended up finishing \u2013 oh so sighfully! \u2013 on the page in the wee hours. Even after 500+ pages (or\u00a015+ hours had I stayed aural), I wouldn&#8217;t have minded more. Yup, it&#8217;s that good.<\/p>\n<p>What else do you need to know about this sprawling story? You&#8217;ve got three temporal settings in three locations: 1998 Seattle which flies\u00a0into Albuquerque; 1979 Salem (in Tamil Nadu, India); and 1982 into 1983 Albuquerque. You&#8217;ve got a single narrator, Amina Eapen, who has three major relationships: with her family made up\u00a0of three members\u00a0\u2013 father, mother, brother; with her unrelated-by-blood cousin, Dimple; and with the love of her life who she doesn&#8217;t recognize until decades after they meet. Then\u00a0you&#8217;ve got three major events that define\u00a0three decades: a disastrous, fraught family reunion that ends with a resounding slap; a family tragedy of haunting proportions; and an unpredictable illness with\u00a0illuminating results.<\/p>\n<p>The only American-born child of immigrants, Amina grows up in Albuquerque\u00a0alternatively ignored and needed by her\u00a0neurosurgeon father Thomas, her born-again mother Kamala, and her platitude-popping, angry older brother Akhil.\u00a0In adulthood, she becomes a photojournalist, filtering life through a lens rather than becoming too involved. But when a certain image of hers\u00a0\u2013 splashed nationally across front pages \u2013 refuses to be contained, Amina retreats inward, eventually re-emerging into\u00a0the relatively safety of capturing other people&#8217;s weddings and celebrations. When her mother unexpectedly calls her home \u2013 albeit with circuitous, unreliable concerns about ghostly conversations \u00a0\u2013 Amina reluctantly lands back in Albuquerque, confronting a past she tried so hard to\u00a0escape.<\/p>\n<p>Words of warning: don&#8217;t read on an empty stomach because Kamala seems to be the South Asian chef-of-the-century\u00a0and Jacob is all about details;\u00a0don&#8217;t start unless you&#8217;re willing to forsake the rest of your responsibilities\u00a0for the next many hours you&#8217;ll need to finish. Other than that,\u00a0you&#8217;re on your own\u00a0\u2013 exactly where you&#8217;ll want to be so you can\u00a0get to that final page.<\/p>\n<p>So &#8230; what are you waiting for? Go read, already!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Probably\u00a0my brain is showing its advancing age, but I can&#8217;t remember the last time I stayed up half the night to finish a book unless I had an impending deadline (procrastinate? me?!). While I started\u00a0Sleepwalk-ing in daylight stuck in the ears (debut novelist Mira Jacob&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,6,52,53,17,18],"tags":[84,6608,75,10,135,123,25,13,5896,129,216,39,170,44,5895],"class_list":["post-34311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-fiction","category-indian","category-indian-american","category-south-asian","category-south-asian-american","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-death","tag-family","tag-grandparents","tag-illness","tag-immigration","tag-love","tag-mira-jacob","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-mystery","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-sibling-rivalry","tag-siblings","tag-sleepwalkers-guide-to-dancing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Sleepwalker&#039;s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-sleepwalkers-guide-to-dancing-by-mira-jacob\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Sleepwalker&#039;s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Probably\u00a0my brain is showing its advancing age, but I can&#8217;t remember the last time I stayed up half the night to finish a book unless I had an impending deadline (procrastinate? me?!). 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