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Sleeping Keys
Sleeping Keys
Jan 13, 2026 5:25 AM

Author:Jean Sprackland

Sleeping Keys

In her first collection since the Costa-winning Tilt, Jean Sprackland looks back at endings and beginnings: the end of a life, or of a marriage; old homes lived in and left, new homes discovered. There are poems that speak of the paralysis and bewilderment of knowing something is over, and of the strangely significant, almost votive nature of the things that are left behind: the biscuit tin ‘of old keys, decommissioned and sleeping’, the empty room fading ‘to a tinnitus of dust and dead wasps’.

This is a book of transitions – domestic and emotional – and it explores how the experience of change is painful, disorientating, even catastrophic, but also profoundly necessary and revelatory. Change brings with it the hope that love can be recovered out of the ruins; change, in fact, is a creative, healing force that shows us we have been living among ruins – that even in the face of grief and loss there are ‘spectral futures / we must stride the ditch to reach’.

Full of exact, vivid, clear-eyed observation of a world of failure and flux, Sleeping Keys also illuminates a future world beyond. For every object left emptied of significance, bereft, Jean Sprackland shows us another that is charged and radiant with possibility – the possibility of miracles.

Reviews

Assured and tactful… Sleeping Keys is a book distinguished by rueful but unembittered wisdom.

—— Sean O'Brien , Guardian

Full of poems that are unashamedly domestic.

—— Suzi Feay , Independent on Sunday

The poems in this collection are short, terse, painful reflections on ends and beginnings… The later poems are ones of resilience, rebirth and hope.

—— Catholic Herald

Apparently simple, down to earth poems with deep, unexpected, surprising images... Every line, each word are loaded with meaning.

—— Lancashire Life

Poems scarred with the painful aftermath of a marital break-up and the wounded delight of new love. Anyone who has been through a divorce will recognise the language of these elegies. Sprackland’s tone sometimes reminds me of Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

—— Bel Mooney , Daily Mail

If you think poetry may not be for you, or perhaps you feel a bit out of step with it and can't think how or where to begin again then Sleeping Keys might be the way back in.

—— DoveGreyReader

An extraordinary near-future adventure

—— chosen as one of the '50 Best Winter Reads' , Independent

A novel of the near future in which genre boundaries no longer have any meaning... The twists and turns of The Man with the Compound Eyes provide compelling reading. It is safe to say you will read nothing else quite like it

—— Maureen Kincaid Speller , Interzone

A fascinating genre-bending novel merging fantasy with an important environmental message

—— Big Issue

A novel anchored in the gritty mess of what it means to remember and to exist as an individual

—— Tash Aw , Guardian

A brilliantly observed tale of class and hedonism

—— The Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Meg Wolitzer’s latest offering promises to be the epic novel of the summer

—— Stella, Sunday Telegraph

A wonderful novel, written with warmth and depth of emotion

—— Kate Mosse , The Times

This is an exhilarating, aerobatic, addictive novel

—— Claire Lowdon , Sunday Times

Meg Wolitzer’s best novel yet

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

The dreamy, criss-crossing narrative proves Wolitzer one of America’s most ingenious and important writers

—— Sunday Telegraph

An engrossing look at life’s twists and turns

—— Woman's Weekly

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level.

—— JEFFREY EUGENIDES

This is a wonderful book. Intelligent and subtle, it is exquisitely written with enormous warmth and depth of emotion… Wolitzer is an affectionate and clear-sighted observer of human nature

—— Kate Mosse , The Times

Meg Wolitzer proves brilliant at writing normal, unremarkable lives, investing them with just as much detailed attention and humane humour as the lives of the beautiful, the rich and the famous… [She] also pulls off an impressive balancing act, sometimes inhabiting the moment-to-moment present of her characters, and at others times writing with a droll hindsight

—— Holly Williams , Independent on Sunday

There are certain authors whose new book you look forward to as though you were about to catch up on news from an old friend. And there are authors whose new book you fall on greedily because you know it will be tartly delicious and satisfy a hunger you didn’t know you had till you read them for the first time. For me, Meg Wolitzer has long been in both of those categories… The Interestings is full of Wolitzer’s trademark pleasures. I love her fearlessness in tackling everything … She has a sly wit and verbal brio which can even make clinical depression entertaining

—— Allison Pearson , Daily Telegraph
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