A while ago someone asked me for recommendations for books that would help in understanding people better, and I answered that no matter what you read, you’re improving that skill. Indeed, I feel like one of the most valuable things about this fantastic activity is how it immerses you in the lives of others. Sometimes our society seems to reward egoism, and the part books play in widening our circle of compassion is immeasurable.

I did also give that person a list of books that I had found particularly great as character studies, and if I were to be asked again, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob would be on that list. Gorgeously written, raw and achingly believable, it’s an astonishingly captivating story of families – biological and communal both.

The story is a big one, a complex one, and realistic in the way it examines the ties between family members. Conflicts common in all kinds of relationships are intensified by the family being torn between two countries: the main character Amina is a first generation American as her parents immigrated from India to New Mexico right before she was born. As with two countries, the novel also moves between two timelines. We are given a background into the family’s association with India and experience the present where the memories of the family members from that earlier timeline still haunt the minds of those left behind. That is a very vague and limited description and there’s so much more going on, but I don’t feel the need to share all of that. Lives are complex and families difficult and reading The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing embraces those qualities. In the end I felt deeply immersed in the fictional community of people, almost like a member of it myself.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one” (George R.R. Martin), is a powerful argument for picking up a book. And we never come out of those lives and stories empty handed.