Sleeping children A novel

In Passeron's beautiful and sorrowful debut autofiction, he attempts to end his family's silence over a relative's death from AIDS decades earlier. Passeron grew up rarely hearing the name of his father's brother Désiré, who died a few years after Passeron was born. Now, after his paternal grandparents have died, he seeks to recover Désiré's story. The novel, which he calls "a mixture of memories, half-finished confessions and documented reconstructions," tracks in parallel Désiré's life and the emergence of AIDS. Born into a family of butchers in "a small, forgotten town" in the South of France, Désiré yearns to "venture beyond the boundaries of a life that had felt like a prison." He goes to school in Nice and then moves to Amsterdam. Upon his return in the early 1980s, he develops a heroin addiction which leads to AIDS--at the time, a new and mysterious disease. As the family struggles with his addiction and illness, a team of French doctors and scientists study the new virus and search for treatments. After Désiré dies, Passeron recounts the illness and death of Émilie, Désiré's young daughter who was born with HIV. In brief chapters and straightforward prose, Passeron patiently unfolds the harrowing family drama and medical mystery. It's a searing testament to how the dead live on in their loved ones' memory. (Apr.)