Caught up in a moment of laughing, urgent desire Richard and Lelia conceive their first
child just before leaving for a friend’s Christmas party. Delighted with each other, they
barely notice the nondescript woman on the fringes of the party. But soon she has
insinuated herself into their lives until Richard finds himself in the grips of an allconsuming erotic obsession, and Lelia is haunted by glimpses of a long buried past.
Richard’s ambivalence about the birth of their child and Lelia’s loneliness at his
emotional desertion only serves to drive a further wedge between them, and as Sylvie’s
influence pervades their lives, their relationship is strained to breaking point.
Joanna Briscoe has written two novels: Mothers and Other Lovers, which won the Betty
Trask Award, and Skin. She lives in London.
Sleep With Me - Discussion
1. ‘But eventually I turned quite sensible, because, having grown beyond all that, I met
Lelia. It was the greatest piece of good fortune. When I was in limbo, resisting the divas
and expecting very little, I met the one I wanted.’ (page 5). What is it about Lelia that
rescues Richard from his chequered emotional past? How would you describe their
relationship in the early chapters of the novel?
2. ‘So. Perhaps our lives were ripe for disruption’ (page 19) What do you think Richard
means by this? What kind of lives do he and Lelia lead?
3. The narrative shifts back and forth between Richard and Lelia. What effect does this
shift in narrative achieve? How do Richard and Lelia appear to each other? How well do
you think they know each other, or themselves? How would you describe their
characters?
4. ‘Well, you see, it seems I can be invisible’ (page 29). At first Sylvie appears
nondescript, easily forgotten, yet she inveigles herself into Richard and Lelia’s circle of
friends and then into the couple’s lives. How does she succeed in doing this? What is it
about her that sparks obsession?
5. ‘I suddenly sensed in her, as I had perhaps twice before, something slightly unclean,
almost seedy, as though she was a slender, knowing little prostitute with shadowed eyes
and an eroded soul’ (page 253). How would you describe Sylvie? What do her emails to
Richard reveal about her?
6. ‘Richard wasn’t excited, I remembered. He pretended.’ (page 82) How does Lelia’s
pregnancy change her relationship with Richard? Why is he so ambivalent about the
prospect of having a child?
7. Richard’s obsession with Sylvie consumes him despite Lelia’s pregnancy and his love
for her. What makes him pursue Sylvie? Did you have any sympathy with him? Are your
feelings about either Richard or Lelia changed by the revelation towards the end of the
novel? What need does Sylvie fulfil in Richard, and in Lelia?
8. Did you guess Sylvie’s identity before it was revealed and if so, at what point, and
why?
9. Although not a thriller in the conventional sense Sleep With Me is a novel of
extraordinary suspense. How does Joanna Briscoe sustain that suspense?
Further Reading
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir
Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore
Damage by Josephine Hart
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
The Story of You by Julie Myerson
My Lover’s Lover by Maggie O’Farrell