Latest news with #Sleep
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Who are Sleep Token? The UK rock band with their first UK number 1
Prior to this weekend the name Sleep Token may not have meant anything to you, but now you'd be hard-pressed not to know the UK rock band sweeping the charts in surprising measures. The UK group have made history with their new album Even in Arcadia, which hit the number one spot in the UK and has topped the US Billboard Chart. Sleep Token have an air of mystery about them perpetuated by the fact they are masked at all times, even when they perform live. Here is everything that you need to know about the group and who they are. Sleep Token officially have two members known as Vessel and II, the group's leader singer and drummer, they are the only two to be given songwriting credits in the band. The group also have a series of touring members, who are also masked on stage and whose identities have remained anonymous. The touring members are known as III (bass guitar), IV (lead guitar and backing vocals), and Espera (backing vocal trio). Sleep Token debuted in 2016 with their first single Thread the Needle, which was followed by their debut album One. The group went on to release a second EP titled Two in July 2017 after they signed with record label Basick Records. The group signed with Universal's Spinefarm records in 2019, and they went on to release their debut full-length album Sundowning in November that year. They have since signed with RCA Records and released albums Take Me Back to Eden before launching Even in Arcadia in May 2025. The group have declared themselves as acolytes to an entity known as Sleep, which is why they are called Sleep Token. The band have spoken often about sharing "His message" with their fans. Sleep Token pride themselves on their anonymity, and have done very few interviews to ensure that their identities remain a mystery. The group's lead singer Vessel spoke with Metal Hammer in May 2017, one of the band's only interviews to date, where he spoke about the reason behind the group's anonymity. "Our identities are unimportant," Vessel told the publication: "Music is marketed on who is or isn't in a band; it's pushed. prodded and moulded into something it isn't. Vessel endeavours to keep the focus on His offerings.' Vessel also said: "How we got here is as irrelevant as who we are – what matters is the music and the message. We are here to serve Sleep and project His message." The publication asked Vessel if he was worried that the band being masked would be seen as a "gimmick" by music fans. To this, Vessel said: "The standard concept of gimmickry is none of our concern. We are here to deliver a message; touch people in their hearts and subconscious minds. Soon, regardless of cynicism, you will all be followers."
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
With 'Even In Arcadia,' has Sleep Token cracked the code for metal in the streaming era?
The bestselling album in America last week came from an experimental British metal band that hides its members' faces behind cloaks and cybersigil masks. They call their anonymous frontperson 'Vessel' and backing band by roman numerals. They profess to be emissaries of a deity called 'Sleep,' and title songs like 'The Night Does Not Belong to God.' They don't do interviews and seem to loathe fame. Despite all that cryptic lore (or perhaps because of it), Sleep Token's RCA Records debut 'Even In Arcadia' crushed the Billboard 200 this month, breaking genre streaming records en route to become the bestselling hard-rock album since Metallica in 2023. 'We knew coming in that we had something pretty big, based on the incredible engagement and live dates,' said RCA Records' chief operating officer John Fleckenstein. But 'Arcadia's' chart-topping debut 'went way beyond even those expectations. This is so much bigger than even we realized.' They've had company atop that chart recently. The veteran Swedish hard-rock group Ghost — also evilly masked and grimly aliased — claimed its first No. 1 LP with 'Skeletá' in May too. Both bands got there after years building devoted, insular fandoms, while also serving as entry points into the genre for newcomers. Is it a coincidence that these bands hit No. 1 in the same month? Or is there something chaotic in American culture that's craving brutal, escapist and lore-driven rock again? 'Metal has been around for a long time, the scene is very vibrant and loyal and it's never gone anywhere,' Fleckenstein sad. 'But the metal world has been centered around album sales and physical purchases. With Sleep Token, we're seeing what we don't ever see — streaming numbers from fans acting like pop consumers.' 'I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing some babies named Vessel in a year,' Fleckenstein said, laughing. 'That's the kind of fan investment here.' The last time two metal-aligned acts hit the top of the Billboard 200 chart in the same year was in 2019, when Slipknot and Tool each earned a third No. 1 album. Both of those acts are veteran bestsellers and have headlined festivals for decades. The fact that Sleep Token and Ghost arrived with their first Billboard 200 bestsellers in 2025 suggests that there's a changing of the guard in the genre, where still-rising acts can hit chart milestones last seen in the nu-metal wave of the late '90s and early 2000s. First up in May was Ghost's 'Skeletá,' the sixth album from the band led by singer Papa V Perpetua (a.k.a. founder Tobias Forge), with a backing band of Nameless Ghouls. The band's satanic imagery is campy; its sound is indebted to '80s chuggers like Judas Priest and Pentagram, like on its recent single 'Satanized.' The band, signed to L.A. indie label Loma Vista, released its first album in 2010 and hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 2022's 'Impera.' The band won a Grammy for metal performance in 2023 after four nominations. 'We are, at the end of the day, an occult, pop, satanic sort of rock 'n' roll band meant to entertain a group of people who are already down with that stuff,' Forge told The Times in 2022. 'This is the world that you hide in after school. And now there's someone coming in there trying to … evolve? It's disruptive.' 'Skeletá' topped the chart with 86,000 units in its first week. With 89% of that figure coming from sales, rather than than streams, they proved that a Swiftian array of physical media could triumph — they offered 15 vinyl variants of the album. It was the first hard-rock album to score a band's first Billboard 200 win since 2015. Sleep Token's 'Even In Arcadia' reclaimed the spot for metal two weeks later. The London-based band is still officially anonymous (though the band members' identities are widely debated online). Its enormous, melancholy and melodic sound pulls from electronic music, jazz, hip-hop and ambient, landing between the dazed crunch of Deftones and growl of Meshuggah, sharing Gen Z's genre-agnostic outlook. The band's neo-pagan masks, gilded broadswords and necrotic body paint make them look more evil than they sound (they've covered Whitney Houston's 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'). But they parlayed their goth-opera imagery into a ravenous fandom, coming out of the pandemic to sell out arenas and major festival dates around the world. The band first hit the album chart with 2023's 'Take Me Back to Eden,' and the Hot 100 debut in March with 'Emergence.' They currently have all 10 songs from 'Arcadia' on the latter chart, with 'Caramel' cresting at 34. 'Arcadia' topped the Billboard 200 with 127,000 units, but the mix of sales and streaming suggested a different dynamic than the album-buying metal audience. The band sold 73,500 albums in its opening week, including 47,000 vinyl LPs — the most of any hard rock band in the modern era. But it also hit 53,000 streaming equivalent albums (nearly 69 million on-demand official streams) in its first week — the most for any hard rock album, ever. 'What we're seeing are superfans who are not just passionate, they're streaming the album eight, nine, 10 times, which looks more like the ways people stream the biggest pop stars,' Fleckenstein said. He called the timing right after Ghost's chart-topping album 'coincidental,' but said that 'seeing fans be so adventurous, getting a taste for this music, it wouldn't surprise me if you see other experimental and courageous acts like them.' He attributes Sleep Token's chart performance to the ferocious online community the band built by being absolutely opaque about its identity, but ever more intricate in its aesthetic. The band's Reddit page, 166,000 members strong, is a daily torrent of fan tattoos of the band's logo, Vessel cosplay outfits and memes of Sleep Token lyrics dropped into scenes of 'Twilight.' Vessel's lyrics seem disquieted by the attention, though. On 'Caramel,' they lament, 'This stage is a prison / Too young to get bitter over it all,' and on 'Damocles,' they drolly admit, 'Well I know I should be touring / I know these chords are boring / But I can't always be killing the game.' That mix of emotional candor and personal distance feels enticing in an overexposed TikTok era. 'We are all living in world where very few things aren't disclosed, and I have to think that there's some level of exhaustion with that,' Fleckenstein said. 'Sleep Token really opens up possibilities for an alternate world, that allows people to create something bigger in the separation. The idea of privacy, true freedom of creative thought, maybe this all is part of a reaction tipping towards that.' On the ground, L.A. record store owners say they're seeing these big acts turn the curious into genre lifers. Sergio Amalfitano's independent record store Midnight Hour in San Fernando specializes in punk, metal and others harsh genres. 'Metal and adjacent heavy genres in general are having a huge moment currently,' Amalfitano said. 'Sleep Token and Ghost are mainstays here in the store. They seem to draw in the older metal fans as well as the new wave of fans. These are the entry level bands for a whole generation, opening up the genre to an influx of supporters.' Amalfitano wouldn't be surprised to see more metal and hard-rock bands make similar climbs up the album charts soon. With modern hard-rock acts like Turnstile, Spiritbox, Poppy and Knocked Loose earning Grammy nominations, and metal bands like 200 Stab Wounds and Sanguisugabogg injecting young energy to classic heavy styles, they're speaking to a broader discontent within society through harsh, relevant sounds. 'These bands definitely have a crossover appeal, but at the same time, also a very rabid fan base,' Amalfitano said. 'I was in Mexico City when the new Ghost record came out and the lines were massive. There's a very big appeal all over the world, and it's not just a U.S. phenomenon.' It's likely no coincidence that this wave is coming amidst a right-wing revanchist American government, though. 'A conservative wave in society tends to lead to a counter-wave of expression,' Amalfitano said. 'When it was the satanic panic, there was glam, heavy and black metal. There's always a response to mainstream politics, and music is the pendulum swing in effect.' While Ghost doesn't have an L.A. date on the books for its 2025 arena tour yet, Sleep Token will play the Forum in September. Fleckenstein said the band has just begun to catch up to the huge demand for an appropriately-scaled live show in the U.S. 'What hasn't happened yet is bringing fans together in person,' Fleckenstein said. 'They're leaning into the album in a parasocial way, and what we're excited about is the impact when fans are in a room with other fans.' It remains to be seen how long this moment will sustain, though. Morgan Wallen, a Billboard 200 chart fixture, has since reclaimed the top slot. RCA still sees plenty of room for Sleep Token and its ilk to win freshly curious audiences, and conjure even more metal acts up the charts. 'Our job is just getting people to go down the rabbit hole,' he said. 'There will be a lot of new fans that grow up on Sleep Token, and I'd love to see this usher in a new wave. It's a paradigm change stretching the boundaries of what metal and pop can be. I don't think there's a stage big enough to contain what they have in their brains.'
CBC
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Max Richter's music put dozens of soldiers to sleep
This year marks the 10th anniversary of one of the most streamed classical records of all time: Sleep by the acclaimed composer and pianist Max Richter. It's an eight-and-a-half-hour epic that you're meant to listen to while you're asleep. In an interview with Q 's Tom Power, Richter says the project got its start in 2013 or 2014, when 4G technology was making the internet more accessible and convenient for the first time. "I was talking with Yulia, my partner, and we were thinking about how creative works can, in a way, function as a kind of alternate reality," he says. "So we thought about this idea of a piece of music as a kind of a pause, or a holiday from this kind of 24/7 data blizzard. And so that's kind of the origins of Sleep." WATCH | Max Richter's full interview with Tom Power: At some performances of the piece, audiences could sleep or lie in a bed as they listened to the music. Richter says Sleep tends to operate on people in very meaningful ways. "The piece works a lot on subsonics," he explains. "Very low frequencies — you feel it physically. In a way, it sort of lulls you, you know, neuroscientists would call it 'rhythmic entrainment.' It sort of synchronizes your body's tempo, in a way, with the tempo of the piece. "The other thing is that the spectrum of the piece mirrors the spectrum that the unborn child hears in the womb because the mother's body filters out all of the high frequencies. So this low frequency pulsing, which is at the heart of Sleep, reminds us of something. It reminds us of something that we've all experienced, even before we knew we were a person." In October 2019, Richter gave a historic performance of Sleep at the Great Wall of China. "We get to the venue and it's surrounded by soldiers with guns, you know, really quite hard-core, scary security," he recalls. "It's kind of stressful, everyone is a bit freaked out. So we start playing the thing and after about two hours I get a break … and I see all these soldiers with their guns asleep on the floor. Dozens of them, just sleeping. And I was just like, 'Yeah. That's it. That's why we're doing this.'" Though Richter made Sleep to be experienced while sleeping, he says many fans have told him they listen to the piece at the office, while doing yoga or while studying. He says music is an art form that you feel, and it can have a real effect on your day. "Maybe this is sort of naive, but I do have faith in music," Richter says. "That sounds, maybe, slightly crazy, but I do sort of believe in the potential of creative work to elicit changes in the world. I experienced that in my own life. If I get out of bed in the morning, I'm making the coffee, I stick the radio on, and it's like [Beethoven's Eroica symphony] or something, my day is going to be a bit better. It just is. One per cent better. But, you know, I really believe in that one per cent."
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A Novel About Motherhood, Childhood, and Secrets
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Honor Jones's debut novel, Sleep, starts with a child's perception of the world around her. I've known Honor, a senior editor at The Atlantic, since we were both children, and reading the book was a little like immersing myself in our own long friendship. I asked Honor a few questions about Sleep, which is out today. You can buy it here. Walt Hunter: I think I was one of the first people to read the whole novel—is that right?—which is an incredible gift for an editor, not to mention a friend. You're an editor, too, and a journalist. What are the differences, for you, between writing fiction and writing nonfiction? Honor Jones: You were! And you gave me the most brilliant notes. We go back: I'll remind you and everyone else here that you also read and advised me on my thesis in college! I see how the idea of moving from fact to fiction could feel really unmooring, but I basically think that writing is writing—you're always thinking about voice, about structure. What really matters is that you have a purpose: something that needs to be said or done in the text. If that's the case, then there's always something dictating what the story needs, even if, instead of news or history, it's only the demands of the story itself. That said, it was hard—and exciting—to try to leave my journalist self out of the sentences. I had to go through and cut like a thousand commas out of the book. During the editing process, I also accidentally called the book title 'the headline' so many times that it started to get embarrassing. Walt: When I think about the novel, the first thing I think about is your style. What does a novel allow you to do that a news story doesn't? Honor: One thing it lets you do is write what a character is thinking and feeling about what's happening, even when she doesn't understand what's happening. This was important because the beginning of the book is told from the perspective of a child. I also felt that I was often exploring an idea that I couldn't argue or defend. A novel is a good place for that, especially if the idea is weird or perverse or otherwise hard to talk about. Walt: The main character, Margaret, is a sharp observer of her world—someone 'on whom nothing is lost,' to borrow a phrase from Henry James. We start the book in the dampness under a blackberry bush—such a tangible detail! Honor: I knew that I didn't want the child in this story to be special or precocious. She has no exposure to the world of art or ideas. She knows next to nothing about history or politics. She's growing up in the '90s, and I have this line about her education lying entirely on a foundation of American Girl–doll books. She simply has no context for what happens to her. But she's trying really hard to make sense of it anyway. She's naturally probably a perceptive kid, but she's also that way because she has to be, because she learns that she has to protect herself. And I think that sense of watchfulness defines her as she grows up. In the sections that follow, she changes in all these ways while remaining fundamentally the same person. I was interested in that—how she can't shake her own history, how many of her choices as an adult are defined by the events of her childhood, how she has to learn to be a mother while remaining a daughter. Walt: The novel is also psychologically astute in any number of ways. For example, we watch the friendship between Margaret and Biddy as it develops over a long period of time. And Margaret's relationship with her family members is, of course, at the center of the book. What are you exploring with these long-term ties? Honor: I loved writing this friendship! You can probably recognize aspects of the girls we both grew up with in the character of Biddy. She's sort of a composite of all the best friends I've loved through life, while also being her own person—ballsier and bolder than any of us were at that age. Biddy really is Margaret's family, the person who stays alongside her through all the years. One thing I find freeing about their relationship is that, even though Margaret keeps this terrible secret from Biddy, in some ways, it doesn't matter. The novel is so concerned with the danger of secrets and the power of disclosure, but Biddy just loves Margaret. She is the one character for whom the truth would change nothing. A lot of the book is about Margaret trying to understand the people around her, but people don't really explain themselves. (Margaret doesn't, either—people keep asking her why she got divorced, and she never has any idea what to say.) When she finds the courage to ask what is maybe the most important question in the book, the answer she gets is profoundly insufficient. I think some readers might find that frustrating, and would rather the book build up to a final confrontation and resolution. But that's not what I was interested in. I think trying to understand, failing to understand, knowing a little more, knowing yourself better—that's what it's about. Walt: The first part of Sleep is set in a place—wealthy suburban New Jersey—where social class has an infinite number of near-invisible gradations. It reminds me a lot of where we grew up, on the Main Line outside Philadelphia. You manage to sneak in so many small details—of decor, especially, but also of social decorum—that reveal these distinctions. They make sense to me, the child of a reporter, whose family never quite fit into the whole milieu. And I recognize myself a little in Margaret—she's not entirely comfortable among the heirs and heiresses. But of course the book is also very tender, in its way, to the people in it. Why write about this place, these people? What did you learn? Honor: The thing that really marks her as an outsider in this social world and class happens when she grows up and gets divorced. But she's always felt like an outsider and an observer, as you say. I wanted to show how, as a child, she's learning about class as if it's just another language. Why does her mother care so much about this particular neighbor? What are they conveying by having this particular pet? It was fun to write about all this signaling from people who are quite incapable of communicating in other ways. Walt: One scene that sticks in my mind—that really keeps me up at night, sometimes—is the one at the party in Brooklyn where we almost suspect that Margaret's child might be in danger. There's genuine suspense there, even some terror. Honor: I think the big question of this book is: How do you raise a child to be safe without raising them to be afraid? What's the right amount of vigilance? Should you—can you—trust the world? I think this feeling of domestic horror will be familiar to a lot of parents. It's a lovely day on the playground, and then suddenly you look up and you can't find your kid. He's fine! He's just behind a tree or whatever. But immediately you're aware of the worst-case scenario. Terror is always an option, and those darker feelings lie right up against the joy and fun of parenting. I think there's a lot of the latter in the book, too. Walt: Does fiction have an ethical responsibility when it comes to representing a moment, or repeated moments, of trauma? What is that responsibility? Honor: If there's anything I think fiction shouldn't tolerate, it's squeamishness. In Sleep, for instance, I had to say what happened to Margaret. I had to describe it in simple language. It had to happen in the beginning of the book. Her particular form of trauma is quieter than many others—there is no violence, for instance. But it's still insidious. Margaret might not understand what's happening, but I wanted the reader to know. You could imagine a different story: a divorced woman's self-doubt, a mystery unfolding, a revelation of memory … but I could not have written that book. It would have felt dishonest. The mystery isn't what was done to her—it's what she does with herself after. Related: 'Skin a rabbit': a short story by Honor Jones 'How I demolished my life' Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: The debate that will determine how Democrats govern next time Adam Serwer: Due process is a right, not a privilege you get for being good. Good on Paper: The myth of the poverty trap Today's News The Trump administration announced a nearly $142 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. In return, Saudi Arabia would invest $600 billion in America's industries. President Donald Trump declared that he would lift sanctions on Syria, ahead of his visit with Syria's new president. Russian and Ukrainian delegations are set to meet this week for their first face-to-face talks since 2022. Evening Read How Part-Time Jobs Became a Trap By Adelle Waldman Several years ago, to research the novel I was writing, I spent six months working in the warehouse of a big-box store. As a supporter of the Fight for $15, I expected my co-workers to be frustrated that starting pay at the store was just $12.25 an hour. In fact, I found them to be less concerned about the wage than about the irregular hours. The store, like much of the American retail sector, used just-in-time scheduling to track customer flow on an hourly basis and anticipate staffing needs at any given moment. My co-workers and I had no way to know how many hours of work we'd get—and thus how much money we'd earn—from week to week. Read the full article. More From The Atlantic America is the land of opportunity—for white South Africans. ChatGPT turned into a Studio Ghibli machine. How is that legal? What the U.K. deal reveals about Trump's trade strategy Is the AfD too extreme for democracy? Weight-loss drugs aren't really about weight. Culture Break Watch. These are 25 of the best horror films you can watch, ranked by scariness, David Sims wrote in 2020. Discover. Gregg Popovich, former head coach and current president of the San Antonio Spurs, shared his life lessons with Adam Harris. Play our daily crossword. Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter. Explore all of our newsletters here. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
A Novel About Motherhood, Childhood, and Secrets
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Honor Jones's debut novel, Sleep, starts with a child's perception of the world around her. I've known Honor, a senior editor at The Atlantic, since we were both children, and reading the book was a little like immersing myself in our own long friendship. I asked Honor a few questions about Sleep, which is out today. You can buy it here. Walt Hunter: I think I was one of the first people to read the whole novel—is that right?—which is an incredible gift for an editor, not to mention a friend. You're an editor, too, and a journalist. What are the differences, for you, between writing fiction and writing nonfiction? Honor Jones: You were! And you gave me the most brilliant notes. We go back: I'll remind you and everyone else here that you also read and advised me on my thesis in college! I see how the idea of moving from fact to fiction could feel really unmooring, but I basically think that writing is writing—you're always thinking about voice, about structure. What really matters is that you have a purpose: something that needs to be said or done in the text. If that's the case, then there's always something dictating what the story needs, even if, instead of news or history, it's only the demands of the story itself. That said, it was hard—and exciting—to try to leave my journalist self out of the sentences. I had to go through and cut like a thousand commas out of the book. During the editing process, I also accidentally called the book title 'the headline' so many times that it started to get embarrassing. Walt: When I think about the novel, the first thing I think about is your style. What does a novel allow you to do that a news story doesn't? Honor: One thing it lets you do is write what a character is thinking and feeling about what's happening, even when she doesn't understand what's happening. This was important because the beginning of the book is told from the perspective of a child. I also felt that I was often exploring an idea that I couldn't argue or defend. A novel is a good place for that, especially if the idea is weird or perverse or otherwise hard to talk about. Walt: The main character, Margaret, is a sharp observer of her world—someone 'on whom nothing is lost,' to borrow a phrase from Henry James. We start the book in the dampness under a blackberry bush—such a tangible detail! Honor: I knew that I didn't want the child in this story to be special or precocious. She has no exposure to the world of art or ideas. She knows next to nothing about history or politics. She's growing up in the '90s, and I have this line about her education lying entirely on a foundation of American Girl–doll books. She simply has no context for what happens to her. But she's trying really hard to make sense of it anyway. She's naturally probably a perceptive kid, but she's also that way because she has to be, because she learns that she has to protect herself. And I think that sense of watchfulness defines her as she grows up. In the sections that follow, she changes in all these ways while remaining fundamentally the same person. I was interested in that—how she can't shake her own history, how many of her choices as an adult are defined by the events of her childhood, how she has to learn to be a mother while remaining a daughter. Walt: The novel is also psychologically astute in any number of ways. For example, we watch the friendship between Margaret and Biddy as it develops over a long period of time. And Margaret's relationship with her family members is, of course, at the center of the book. What are you exploring with these long-term ties? Honor: I loved writing this friendship! You can probably recognize aspects of the girls we both grew up with in the character of Biddy. She's sort of a composite of all the best friends I've loved through life, while also being her own person—ballsier and bolder than any of us were at that age. Biddy really is Margaret's family, the person who stays alongside her through all the years. One thing I find freeing about their relationship is that, even though Margaret keeps this terrible secret from Biddy, in some ways, it doesn't matter. The novel is so concerned with the danger of secrets and the power of disclosure, but Biddy just loves Margaret. She is the one character for whom the truth would change nothing. A lot of the book is about Margaret trying to understand the people around her, but people don't really explain themselves. (Margaret doesn't, either—people keep asking her why she got divorced, and she never has any idea what to say.) When she finds the courage to ask what is maybe the most important question in the book, the answer she gets is profoundly insufficient. I think some readers might find that frustrating, and would rather the book build up to a final confrontation and resolution. But that's not what I was interested in. I think trying to understand, failing to understand, knowing a little more, knowing yourself better—that's what it's about. Walt: The first part of Sleep is set in a place—wealthy suburban New Jersey—where social class has an infinite number of near-invisible gradations. It reminds me a lot of where we grew up, on the Main Line outside Philadelphia. You manage to sneak in so many small details—of decor, especially, but also of social decorum—that reveal these distinctions. They make sense to me, the child of a reporter, whose family never quite fit into the whole milieu. And I recognize myself a little in Margaret—she's not entirely comfortable among the heirs and heiresses. But of course the book is also very tender, in its way, to the people in it. Why write about this place, these people? What did you learn? Honor: The thing that really marks her as an outsider in this social world and class happens when she grows up and gets divorced. But she's always felt like an outsider and an observer, as you say. I wanted to show how, as a child, she's learning about class as if it's just another language. Why does her mother care so much about this particular neighbor? What are they conveying by having this particular pet? It was fun to write about all this signaling from people who are quite incapable of communicating in other ways. Walt: One scene that sticks in my mind—that really keeps me up at night, sometimes—is the one at the party in Brooklyn where we almost suspect that Margaret's child might be in danger. There's genuine suspense there, even some terror. Honor: I think the big question of this book is: How do you raise a child to be safe without raising them to be afraid? What's the right amount of vigilance? Should you—can you—trust the world? I think this feeling of domestic horror will be familiar to a lot of parents. It's a lovely day on the playground, and then suddenly you look up and you can't find your kid. He's fine! He's just behind a tree or whatever. But immediately you're aware of the worst-case scenario. Terror is always an option, and those darker feelings lie right up against the joy and fun of parenting. I think there's a lot of the latter in the book, too. Walt: Does fiction have an ethical responsibility when it comes to representing a moment, or repeated moments, of trauma? What is that responsibility? Honor: If there's anything I think fiction shouldn't tolerate, it's squeamishness. In Sleep, for instance, I had to say what happened to Margaret. I had to describe it in simple language. It had to happen in the beginning of the book. Her particular form of trauma is quieter than many others—there is no violence, for instance. But it's still insidious. Margaret might not understand what's happening, but I wanted the reader to know. You could imagine a different story: a divorced woman's self-doubt, a mystery unfolding, a revelation of memory … but I could not have written that book. It would have felt dishonest. The mystery isn't what was done to her—it's what she does with herself after. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Today's News The Trump administration announced a nearly $142 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. In return, Saudi Arabia would invest $600 billion in America's industries. President Donald Trump declared that he would lift sanctions on Syria, ahead of his visit with Syria's new president. Russian and Ukrainian delegations are set to meet this week for their first face-to-face talks since 2022. Evening Read How Part-Time Jobs Became a Trap By Adelle Waldman Several years ago, to research the novel I was writing, I spent six months working in the warehouse of a big-box store. As a supporter of the Fight for $15, I expected my co-workers to be frustrated that starting pay at the store was just $12.25 an hour. In fact, I found them to be less concerned about the wage than about the irregular hours. The store, like much of the American retail sector, used just-in-time scheduling to track customer flow on an hourly basis and anticipate staffing needs at any given moment. My co-workers and I had no way to know how many hours of work we'd get—and thus how much money we'd earn—from week to week. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Watch. These are 25 of the best horror films you can watch, ranked by scariness, David Sims wrote in 2020. Discover. Gregg Popovich, former head coach and current president of the San Antonio Spurs, shared his life lessons with Adam Harris. Play our daily crossword. Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
