Family Gossip

...First there is the real-life situation that authors use as basis for fiction that will cause suspension of disbelief...

...And everybody's there that night— I won't name names—but everybody's there: the actress, the author, the journalist, the newspaper editor, the theater director, the publisher, the film director...

...What were those novels like...

...Rikard, my grandfather, claimed that he didn't drink at all, even though people say he made a fortune in America by selling liquor—but that was a very long time ago...

...After Karin acquires Carl he tells her often that he would be nothing without his cowboy boots...

...Unfortunately...

...Did he set a pattern in them, teach a technique for giving the sense of lurking mystery, even tragedy, that infuses Linn Ullman's scenes of comic human eccentricity in Before You Sleep...

...Once, emerging from the theater, he suggests that lying is legitimate in certain circumstances...

...So far, so good...

...And she didn't get rich either...

...Julie was the only one in the family who was—what do they call it?—a moderate and sensible drinker...

...when successful she has to meet demands that strain the reader's happily shocked wish to go along...

...Failing to divert his attention from the blonde beside him, she goes to the balcony and coerces the bandleader into agreeing to let her sing, then returns to the table, pours wine over the head of the blonde and gives "a little signal" to the musicians...

...We hear the preacher's words— all of them, it seems, though actually they are selected for their possibly ominous overtones...

...You looked lost in that gown, lovely and lost, and that endless long veil trailing behind that veil that stretched down the middle aisle of the church, out onto the steps, down the street, across the fjord, through the sky like the stroke of a brush...

...Ullman makes us believe in her family cast by revealing their human qualities through her screenplay method of showing every smallest action in a scene...

...Reviewed by Hope Hale Davis Author, "Great Day Coming: A Memoir of the 1930s" Imagine a reader of Before You Sleep so innocent of literary buzz as not to know the parentage of the author...

...In the novel Karin's mother is not Liv Ullman, or any of the actresses of Anni's dreams...

...In the Preface to Bergman's screenplay collection, his producer tells us that Bergman always presented his film ideas first as short novels...

...In this novel Ullman carries the dictum to a fascinating extreme...

...Who was it that said all fiction was lying...

...The reader goes to the bookcase in search of some reference to check for comparison...

...Nor is Karin's father the great film personage Ingmar Bergman...

...the sun is shining in her eyes, on her thick reddishblond hair, which she has put up with shiny gold barrettes...

...When she is finally able to remove them, he turns into a mackerel...

...Anni does this without effort, just by being— being what she is: irresistible...

...Since from childhood Karin has been known as a liar, she gives deep thought to his words...

...Anni is a hairdresser, though nothing in the story bears this out...

...Performing her childhood ritual of adding whiskey to her cocoa, she is moved to reflect, with her own kind of analytic wisdom: "If I tried to describe my family, and that's exactly what I'm going to do, you could probably say that Anni drank to forget, I drank to be happy, Father drank just to keep going, Grandma drank to sleep better at night, Aunt Selma drank to be even meaner than she already was...

...Anni is standing in the light, I'm standing in the shade...

...Hearing their straightforwardly reported, often comic histories, the reader for some reason begins to feel concerned about what may happen to them...

...It did her no good...

...Ullman ends this wildly wish-fulfilling scene with the statement, "That's Gershwin...

...I remember seeing you up there at the altar, the tiny flowers in your hair, the long pearl-embroidered, cream-colored, and much too princesslike silk gown...

...But look where all this cinéma vérité can lead: '"It was your wedding day, Julie...

...Nobody,' I say...

...And I sing like I've never sung before...

...She puts him in a bowl where he, swimming furiously but still vocal, protests that he can't eat his breakfast...

...Takes a swallow of red wine...

...The first clue might be missed...

...Earlier, before Karin leaves forthe wedding, in one of her impulsive digressions, she has given what may be the truly significant introduction to her cast...

...Father scratches under his eye...

...Since so many writers use the movie jump-cut style these days, our innocent readermight not notice certain subtleties that set this book apart...

...In the wedding scene she reports exactly where everyone is sitting, their shrugs and whispers and significant glances...

...In Ullman's novel the reckless young Karin frequently sets herself to catch a man, but she has to work harder, making bold, highly unladylike advances...

...Other madness ensues, all described with the detail of a realistic occurrence...

...he says...

...Then suddenly, it's the day her older daughter Julie is getting married: "And Anni is standing on the steps outside the church, receiving the wedding guests...

...They play like they've never played before...

...The book falls open—again, pure luck—to a scene in Smiles of a Summer Night where Charlotte says, "I assure you that I can seduce Mr...

...Billy, for instance, insists on making love at every site where he has bad associations, such as beside the palace wall "(Billy's a staunch monarchist)" or "outside the main post office (because it's so ugly)," and once in an elevator...

...There's who?' she asks...

...Ullman in Karin's young voice, pouring out her family gossip, is able to create anxiety even about whether Uncle Fritz, who as a precaution will be seated next to Karin at the nuptial feast, will succumb to his need during festive meals to vomit...

...but even such a reader, shortly after starting this youthfully exuberant yet often shadowy novel, will begin to catch a scent, and to follow the trail...

...In between lively leaps—back decades to the grandfather as immigrant in his beloved America, and forward to the suspenseful end of the story—Ullman introduces all the family members—as they arrive for the ceremony...

...Clearly those outings holdtremendous meaning in her life...

...But how much can be accepted, even in terms of a novel...

...I open my mouth as wide as I can and stick my hand inside...

...She didn't forget, she wasn't happy, she couldn't sleep, and she was never mean...

...Father too...

...She backs the boast with a bet, and wins...

...Oh, I don't know,' I say, confused, and look at the man approaching the church...

...The reader, meanwhile, must give deep thought to the whole question of imaginative art...

...And everybody stops talking and simply listens...

...Unlikely, perhaps...

...Egerman in less than a quarter of an hour...

...When Karin decides to catch a man— any man, but it must be now—the innocent reader whiffs a hint and starts to wonder whether the following exchange doesn't sound like a screenplay: "'There he is!' I say...

...Who is it, Karin?' asks Anni again...

...Ullman raises questions—always entertainingly—about levels of reality...

...A gasp goes through the Theater Caf...

...Do you mean that Aleksander is cheating on Julie with Val Bryn, her maid of honor...

...what he does when he is not taking her to the movies is mostly vague...

...Take the scene on the train when Anni, abandoned wife, mother of Karin, the narrator, reduces her much younger boyfriend to tears of adoration and awe...

...She has a way of startling the reader to attention—in this case mingling, all in Karin's blithely screwball account—her need to rival her mother with her devotion to her father and to America...

...I didn't mean to say it out loud, but Anni hears me...

...By pure chance the only screenplays there turn out to be a collection of four Ingmar Bergman works...

...In another scene Karin resolves to attract Carl, a stranger in a restaurant...

...don't know, I'm just telling you the story.' '"Exactly how far into his mouth was her foot?' asks Father...

...it's gleaming on her dark green high heels that are scraping the ground...