cover image The Real Sleeper: A Love Story

The Real Sleeper: A Love Story

Theodore R. Gardner. Allen A. Knoll Publishers, $14.95 (229pp) ISBN 978-0-9627297-8-2

The tongue-in-cheek title tips off the subtle charms of this captivating and bittersweet novel about an unlikely love affair between a bumbling and repressed book editor a few months shy of 60 and a breezy but big-hearted 23-year-old model who specializes in taking it all off for the camera. For 35 years, Edgar Wellington has been stuck in a passionless marriage with Penelope, chair of the Zoology Department at USC. Viewing Edgar as something of a cipher and relating to him more as co-owner of their Southern California ranch house than as a friend or lover, Penelope sneers when her husband tumbles for the beautiful, waif-like Kelly O'Leary after he observes her posing nude for a dust jacket. Edgar summons his courage to call the young woman; the two fall in love, sharing a perfect symbiosis of idyllic romance and flaming passion. The course of their affair propels Penelope toward her own meaningful epiphany as well; so it's with gratitude rather than despair that each of the characters considers the impending death that concludes the novel (which is told from multiple points of view). While May-December romance may be a tired theme, Gardner handles his variant of it with skill, compassion and whimsy. (Nov.)