We sat in the kitchen across the small wooden table from each other. She cried like banks bursting, then silence; like winds blowing through her shoulders, chest bouncing, then long shallow breaths. She ruptured and I watched, still, emotionless. 'You must stop crying.'
When Marie-Elsa was just six years old, her mother took her own life. Now, many years later, she returns to that night. Going back to that moment, inhabiting this defining tragedy, allows for an exploration of the grief but also brings healing.
Written partly as a series of unsent letters to both her mother and father, Sleeping Letters is a way of connecting to past family, an attempt to reconcile with loss, as well as a radical exploration of Marie-Elsa’s own faith. It is an unforgettable book, with a luminous sense of a daughter’s loss.
With a Foreword by Rowan Williams
‘Truly remarkable... This book carries its readers to a place where inhibitions and fears about loss and death give way to something more hopeful and, in their own way, real’ Daily Telegraph
Everything in Sleeping Letters tastes and smells of the authentic life. It’s a living example of what both religion and – especially in Jung’s wise hands – psychology are supposed to do and be. This tiny book is an enormous lesson in finding the sacred through our suffering, in always trusting the impossible, in remembering how to write and read while asleep
Str. Arh. Ion Mincu 17
Sector 1, Bucuresti
Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00
Saturday 09:30-13:00