Rating: 
Summary: Good for the first 25 pages
Review: I bought this becuse it got a great review in the Village Voice and now seeing that the author lives in Brooklyn he must know the reviewer and got a gift from him. Anyway I read close to a hundred pages hoping it would get better and reaized that it was a complete waste of my time.
Rating: 
Summary: A lot of potential, but tries too hard to be clever
Review: I bought this book because I read an interview with Anne Tyler, one of my favorite authors, who recommended it. Having read the reviews posted here, I was not expecting it to be like Tyler's novels (sympathetic and haunting), and it was not. Instead, "The Sleeping Father" is one sarcastic remark after another. Half the time these remarks work, and the reader is captivated by the wit with which Sharpe describes what is, after all, a heart-rending family tragedy: Two teenagers, Chris and Cathy, on the cusp of adulthood who must cope first with their parents' divorce and then their father's brain injury. Unfortunately, the other half the time the comments fall flat, and--at least for this reader--the author's style grates on one's nerves. It seemed at times overly self-conscious, similar to Dave Egger's "A heartbreaking work of staggering genius," but whereas this self-consciousness was charming in Egger's book, here it merely becomes tedious.But there are times that Sharpe's sardonic style issues sentences that linger like brain candy. Take, for example, Sharpe's description of the rehab center where Chris and Cathy ultimately placed their recovering father: "Despite the effort of the management of the Roosevelt Rehabilitation Facility had made to ensure that its patrons would not feel shut in, quarantined, hospitalized, warehoused, imprisoned, or abandoned, a lot of them did, and some of them were" (p. 136). Or this delightful passage: "As a child, [the Catholic saint] Edith Stein had secret, silent sufferings that eventually led her to faith in God. Cathy had secret, silent sufferings that led her to more secret, silent sufferings" (p. 145). I kept reading this book because of passages like those. I just wish that some editor had applied a firm and kind hand throughout the prose to wean out the comments that fell flat, e.g., "That was what she [Cathy] wanted to believe but that was not what she believed" (p. 56). In short, this was a frustrating read for me. Not so bad or awful that I regretted buying or reading it or couldn't finish it, but not so good I would recommend it without hesitation.
Rating: 
Summary: Unrealistic characters and story line
Review: I bought this book for my bookclub. Boy, were we lead astray by the description and the participation in the Today Show Bookclub! The characters were unrealistic, too many odd characteristics forced into each one, to the point where they were unbelievable. The storyline had so many holes...what hospital would allow a teenage son to take home his mentally/physically challenged father to continute rehab (directed by that son) at home? What shelter would accept $75,000 from a teenage girl without permission from her parents? The author forced the storyline along on the path he wanted, not the path that could have happened with these characters, and tried too hard. Honestly, my bookclub was terribly disappointed in this book. If I could rate "zero" stars, I would!
Rating: 
Summary: This is a good book, damn it
Review: I read this book a long time ago, but felt like I should write something favorable after reading all the negative reviews. Honestly, this book was like a breath of fresh air compared to all the clones that usually appear on book club and bestseller lists. If you're looking for a formula, look elsewhere. Sharpe writes with a unique, subtle, and elegant style that remains down-to-earth and accesible to the reader.
That said, I agree with another reviewer that a more scrutinous editor should have elimated many of the weaker lines. And yes, many aspects are unrealistic, but not nearly so much as to warrant the absurd rage of some other reviewers. People, get your emotions under control, its just a damn book.
And what's up with this obsession with realism? How come hardly anybody holds Hollywood to such strict standards? In this case, at least you get an artful, well-composed story in return for your suspension of disbelief.
Sharpe is a talented, energtic young writer, the kind that should be encouraged today when our books tend to fall into two categories: either vacuous, pop culture crap or predictable, bland, NY Times Book Review-type crap.
Rating: 
Summary: dark and hilarious
Review: I'm not going to write a dissertation here, but I have to plug this book. It's the best read I've found in a long time. I had read Nothing Is Terrible, his excellent and weird modern-day Jane Eyre first novel, and was so pleased to see his second one at the bookstore. The Sleeping Father is so successful as a serious and as a comic novel-- the ambivalences and fraught silences and cruelties and faux pas that bedevil friendship, family, religion and civilization as a whole are rendered so truthfully-- you may laugh, you may cry, I don't know how you deal with those things, but I can almost guarantee you'll cringe repeatedly. Every character screws up in the most recognizable and inevitable ways... and everyone does such a ridiculous misguided job of trying to compensate... it's just a really really good book. Really.
Rating:
Summary: Six Stars
Review: I've given five stars to other books in the past, and now I'm sorry. I wish I had a sixth star to give to The Sleeping Father. This is the top of the line. There is something lurking beneath the surface of this book that is so funny and true and understated and delicious. The point of view is bizarre to great effect. We are sometimes zoomed in, given glimpes of characters' deepest feelings and thoughts and other times zoomed way out to a very broad, distant description. Sharpe uses this technique brilliantly. You will remember this book's characters--ascerbic, deeply teenaged Chris, Cathy the Jewish Catholic-wannabe, their father, Bernard who is the living personification of funny and sad all at once. You may not realize that the plot is moving forward. It might feel like you're ambling through the pages, enjoying scalding commentary on modern life, but you're actually heading somewhere. Enjoy the ride.
Rating:
Summary: "Words surged up into his brain, as if they were a hormone"
Review: Matthew Sharpe, in this complex novel may have cornered the literary market on the use of irony. His main protagonist, Chris Schwartz is a teenage master that skillfully uses humor and subtle sarcastic expression to achieve his own ends with, at times, riotous and sometimes disastrous results. The Sleeping Father is a funny and weird story of a modern American family in the throws of dysfunction. The Schwartz's are truly eccentric and this eccentricity is turned into a kind of American funhouse family mirror.
When the affable Bernie Schwartz, a divorced dad combines two incompatible anti-depressant medications, he falls into a coma, has a stroke, and emerges with brain damage. He reverts to a type of childhood state, while his teenage son, Chris and his teenage daughter, Cathy - who have their own demons to contend with - decide to rehabilitate him on their own with money they've inherited from their dead grandfather. Absent an adequate father, and having a disaffected, self-involved mother that lives in California, the children are left alone to struggle and cope. Chris, in his path to adulthood tries everything from sex to capitalism in his search for guidance on the path to adulthood and Cathy, looks to Catholicism for solace, believing that her secular Jewishness is inadequate in the provision of giving her the security
There are some wonderfully comic moments in this novel as Sharpe peppers the narrative with witty, and sparkling dialogue. Chris is miserable and his misery is at first caused by his father's new circumstance, and then compounded by his macabre, misogynistic, and unrequited crush on his father's young sexy neurologist Lisa Danmeyer. He's desperately trying to conduct himself in an "adult world." Chris is a bit dorky on the outside, but on the inside he has a wild, strangely erotic and mildly psychopathic inner life. He's in danger of "disconnecting from the continent of causality and floating out into a sea of pure anxiety - a kid trying to find his place in this crazy mixed up world but can't."
Sharpe deftly explores how America provides mental health through its social services, and effectively questions the role of religious faith in American life. This is a world where "intimacy is the house that shelters you from the weather, and kindness is comfortable furniture. You need the former to service; you need the latter to feel comfortable." There's a sense of exhaustion and a thriving contemporary sensibility pervading The Sleeping Father. There's also a unique point-of-view that flits about, entering the queer minds of any character at any given time. Mostly, the story seems to be told in third-person-limited from the point of view Chris, but then all of a sudden we enter Cathy, or Frank Dial, Chris's best friend, or Lisa's mind. The fact that the narrative doesn't stick with one character also gives it a nice distance, and the reader is able to look at them all with a critical detachment. The Sleeping Father is simultaneously heart wrenchingly emotional, and also a deeply cynical coming-of-age novel, and the author creates a wonderful tension that is maintained well into the final pages of the book. Mike Leonard August 04.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, sad
Review: Sad book, some parts a little disturbing and disfunctional - didn't care for the ending much either. Overall though, quick read, kept my attention
Rating:
Summary: Sleeping Father
Review: Since it was recommended by a Book Club on the Today Show, my library ordered it. It was written by a professor of literature, as I was reading it I thought, "Surely it is going to get better". It didn't if anything it got worse. When I finished the book I would have thrown it out the window but it belonged to the library. P.S. This one didn't deserve even one star.
Rating:
Summary: Dare I say, a step up from Delillo??? BRILLIANT
Review: Slowly creeping through Delillo's world in White Noise, I felt I was caught up in the midst of an apocalypse where acerbic wit teetered on everyone's tongue and everyone was comfortably uncomfortable. So close it was to the typical Updike tale of a family enduring crisis independently and as a collective infused with Delillo's politics and vision of the technologically obsessed society. Television is the collective unconscious, and the family competes to out-wit one another. In the end, I shielded myself with my radioactive blanket and prayed for a simpler world of beanstalks and freesia instead of one where mankind was slowly committing mass suicide. I had a similar feeling while reading Matthew Sharpe's The Sleeping Father, however, I will dare to say that Sharpe is more successful than Delillo's (although incredibly brilliant) work in so far as they novel delivers a quieter message about the crumbling nuclear family without the fanfare and confetti of toxic gas and gas masks. Here, divorced and depressed Bernard Schwartz, unhappily medicated on Prozac, manages to take another anti-depressant which chemically reacts to induce a coma. While he lies in a hospital bed, he is surrounded by his gifted and utterly sad children that need him to sustain. Chris Schwartz is a man that only drinks when he knows he will drive and his younger sister, Cathy, fascinated by the Jewish martyr turned saint, Edith Stein, earnestly cloaks herself with holy water, prayer and ritual in order to unfold her identity and aid in her coping with a mute father, a mother that Cathy caught in a compromising position while she was married to Bernie and a brother that both angers and comforts her. Although Sharpe is merciless in his dialogue between characters, arming them with caustic wit, he undoes them with moments that his characters themselves can only own. Alone in the hospital bed, Chris proceeds to draw a Hitler moustache on his father's sleeping face and after he's seen his work, he crumbles and huddles under his father's bed to be closer to him. After rebuffing Chris's best friend and fellow embittered partner-in-crime, Frank Dial's lyric about her moist palms, she is soon drawn closer to Frank and ultimately, they seek to create a new family outside of their withering own. Somewhat oblivious to their own privilege, Sharpe is careful about rendering his characters sympathetic, not sentimental. After donating an inheritance to a battered woman's shelter, Cathy befriends a victim who consequently robs their home so that her family, too, can start another life. All the characters, albeit, Dr. Danmeyer, mother Lila Munroe, Moe Danmeyer, Frank Dial seek something other in Sharpe's brilliantly constructed novel. However, they find that the one thing that remains, that binds them together is Bernie, who after waking from his comma, finds his family completely fallen apart, his ex-wife with another man and is limited by his own capacity to speak and construct words. Again, Sharpe veers away from the over-sentimentality by infusing some of Bernie's own wit into the most honest narrative in the entire work. Cloaked by his illness, he has been given license to react truthfully and sometimes tactless - this serves to continuously challenge the surrounding characters that ironically enough, are mentally superior. Although he is compromised by his illness, he is not compromised as a fully-realized and endearing character. There are some truly hysterical moments in a novel that involves a coma, a beating, a divorce, a robbery, pistol-whipping, however they are uplifted by the individual characters unraveling themselves and redefining family in their own particular way. The laughter comes from a real place - one of fear, of love. The only criticism that I can offer is ironically what I loved most about the tale Sharpe weaves. All of the characters are too finely tuned, everyone knows exactly what to say at any given moment and they are all armed with their own brand of barbs and witticisms. It may have fared more successful (than the novel already is) if a character other than Bernie was somehow calmer, less ready to react for at times, the characters' dialogue echoed too close to one another. A small note on an otherwise searing portrait.
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