From Publishers WeeklyWith this impressive if flawed sequel to the magisterial AEgypt (1987), Crowley offers another taste of his deeply intellectual brand of contemporary fantasy. As a boy, historian and writer Pierce Moffett formulated a fascination with the occult, devouring tomes of arcane lore. Now Pierce has become more and more convinced that, assorted times in history, the world has undergone a great transformation whereby the nature of things–the schemes that govern it is operation–have changed; where once alchemy and magic worked, now they don’t. Digging through the papers of a bestloved childhood novelist, Pierce discovers an unpublished manuscript that, set in the 16th century and tracking two real-life men of knowledge, seems to bolster his supposition that things were without doubt once different. Several people are affected by his discovery–the woman he comes to care for; an epileptic child; a dying man seeking the philosopher’s stone. It’s not in the plot that the relative amount of energy of Crowley’s book lie. Rather, it’s in the breathtaking language, the rolling seductive sentences and the precision with which he evokes the sense of each and everyday life spiced with hints of mystical secrets. The problem, though, is that there’s no proper payoff to all the portent. Crowley tries mightily, but he just can’t pull off the miracle of creating his own philosopher’s stone here. Still, if what he ends up with isn’t rather gold, it glitters sufficient to keep readers involved. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus ReviewsCrowley (Aegypt, 1987, etc.) struggles to recapture the smooth blending of straight narrative and speculative hermeticism that gave his best work, Little, Big (1981), the startling quality of metaphysical realism. It eludes him, unfortunately, here. Very much a book of levels, as the title’s two primal forces indicate, this is the story of a writer named Pierce Moffett, who grew up with his mother and uncle and cousins in rural Kentucky (far got rid of from his homosexual father back in New York City). Pierce ultimately turns into an upstate New York loner, an isolato equipped with paranormal gifts of magic and wisdom that set him more with resolute determination in tune with the music of the spheres than with the lives of his neighbors. The book is a chronicle of Pierce’s slow steps into this world (a fuller sex life, learning to drive) but also a charting of the introduction he unwittingly provides to others of a reality off, as it were, to one side of each and everyday conscious life. Crowley adds historical focus in chapters when it comes to the struggles of two 16th-century psychic pioneers, the Italian metaphysician Giordano Bruno and the English mage John Dee. These historical sections, altho graceful (Crowley is a deliciously graceful writer, sentence by sentence), are heavy dumplings; and though Crowley at last and rather strikingly turnbuckles the two levels into one at the end, it feels a lot less than natural and inevitable. The split-vision gorgeous much weighs down the spring of Pierce’s pilgrim’s progression into love and eroticism (women, but likewise a sexual kinship with a 13-year-old boy who is his illegitimate son, a pure Eros figure). In the end, the mystery psychological result of perception learning and reasoning so sought after here comes to seem a burden the reader would rather shrug off than embrace. Disappointing. — Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From the Publisher”From John Crowley, author of Little, Big, comes a major work of American magic realism set in the same realm of infinite possibleness as his gravely acclaimed Egypt (a New York Times “notable Book” for 1987). Love & Sleep revolves around Pierce Moffett, who as a boy was no stranger to magic, scratching the surface of popular life to find something glittering and strange underneath. For most children, these revelations fade with time, but for the adult Pierce — engaged in a struggle to retain the youthful imaginativeness and innocence of childhood — the search for the concealed history of the world is just beginning. An eloquent treatise on the mysteries of life, Love & Sleep proves Crowley to be one of American literature’s most initial and worthful treasures.
“John Crowley is an abundantly gifted writer, a scholar whose passion for history is matched by his capacity to write a graceful sentence.” — New York Times Book Review.
“Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everyone else in the dust.” — Peter Straub
“A master of language, plot and characterization, Crowley triumphs in this occult and Herrnetic tale, at once naturalistically persuasive and uncannily visionary. Love & Sleep rewards endless rereading, as does Little, Big.” — Harold Bloom, author of The Book Of J.
Love Sleep John Crowley Picture
Love Sleep John Crowley Pic
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Most helpful client reviews
10 of 11 humans found the following review helpful.
 Misunderstood
By Christopher I. Lehrich
The initial sequel to AEgypt, Love & Sleep chronicles lovelorn and adrift Pierce Moffett as he stands upon the cusp of a magical alter in history. Simultaneously, we view the brief encounter amid Giordano Bruno and John Dee at Mortlake in the late 16th century, Pierce’s own childhood in the Cumberland mountains, and get started to see deeply into the lives of Pierce’s two roses (Rose Ryder and Rosie Rasmussen). This book seems to have been nonpopular with a great deal of Crowley fans, perchance because it closely totally lacks any sort of action, and is rather a lyrical, brooding meditation on alter and age. It is also unfeigned that a good deal of of the Renaissance scenes are over-long, windy, and at times do not rather ring true. Further, it is a sequel, and what’s more will have two more sequels of it is own; the third book in the series, Daemonomania, is already out, but who knows when book 4 will appear? Although I would grant all these criticisms, it is Crowley’s graceful prose that makes this book such an extraordinary achievement. AEgypt was a bit unfocused, seemingly unsure where it was going; Love & Sleep takes wing and soars. Crowley’s ear for progressed speech is exceptional, and he also manages to clutch us in an emotional manner without ever dipping into maudlin or pathos. Furthermore, the way he weaves together oddities of Renaissance magical history and mythology with the modern world is breathtaking — Bobby Shaftoe’s werewolf father is hauntingly real, human, and deeply felt. For me, this is Crowley’s best book since Little, Big, but it’s surely not for the quick reader. Love & Sleep requires a good deal of crusade and time from the reader, and we must be prepared to surrender to the homely, slow pace of the prose.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Haunting
By Crowley Fan
Volume two of Crowley’s vast novel “Aegypt”: I alternated amidst rapture and uncomfortableness while reading this. The original third, relating numerous sequences from the main character’s childhood, is exquisite by any standard; but the rest of the book suffers as a reading experience from jagged transitions and maddening enigmas. Great set-pieces and superb bits of writing are to be found in it–as well as a jaw-dropping shock for any person the tiniest bit prudish–but the overall impression is that the book is adrift. There is no specific flow or flavor to “Love & Sleep” as a whole, like there is in “Aegypt”‘s astonishingly outstanding original volume.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
 Magical Mystery Tour
By Daniel Myers
I ought to say that these other reviews are not too terribly helpful to a potential reader who has perchance just heard of Crowley, wonders what all the to-do is in regards to and has chanced all over this webpage. This review is directed at such a reader, as without doubt I myself am, still, having now finished three of Crowley’s works.
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