Kindle Edition Amazon Sleep Before Evening Category:  Literary Fiction Publisher: BeWrite Books ISBN-10:  1904492967 Type: Fiction Pages: 296 Copyright: July 24, 2007 ISBN-13: 9781904492962 Price: $4.56 (eBook) This gritty, relentless story unfolds with the same cool detachment that motivates the central character to peel back the layers of her life and expose the painful scalding within. Marianne is teetering at the edge of reason. A death in the family sends her brilliant academic career and promising future spiraling out of control until resentment towards those who shaped her past leads her on a wild and desperate search for the truth about herself. On the seedy side of New York, she meets Miles, a hip musician busking the streets and playing low-rent venues in a muddled bid to make his own dreams come true. In her new life, she finds anarchic squalor, home grown music and poetry, booze, drugs, sex, violence, love, loss . and, above all, exhilarating freedom on her troubled journey from sleep to awakening. This gritty, relentless story unfolds with the same cool detachment that motivates the central character to peel back the layers of her life and expose the painful scalding within.  Excerpt Flames were everywhere. Smoke ringed the room, leaving only small amounts of oxygen near the floor. As he crawled across the parquet tiles, the clock melted, its edges pouring Dali-like down the dresser, covering his clothes in liquid plastic, red and white streaks mirrored by tears which left red lines down his face. He reached his arms towards the door, chanting his name: Eric, Eric, Eric. His skin melted into his pajamas while the distorted clock continued to tick loudly. Marianne watched him shrink, shrivel and disappear in a haze of smoke and black ashes, powerless to help, as his chanted name continued to pierce the roar of flames. She tried to reach out her arms for him, as he once did for her, but her body remained motionless. She called to him, but no words came out of her mouth. Each "Eric" berated her; an angry bark against her inability to move forward and save him. "Grandpa!" she screamed, but instead, laughter, hysterical and cruel, filled the room, cutting through the smoke and coinciding with the ringing of her alarm clock.

CATHY BIRIBAUER, The Rose & Thorn
Magdalena Ball demonstrates her mastery of the musicality of language and many scenes are imbued with striking imagery...As the drama coils tighter and tighter, it is this quality of writing that keeps the reader utterly glued. As Marianne struggles with her demons and we almost hold our breath as she nears her eighteenth birthday, Magdalena Ball's Sleep Before Evening shows us that in order to find yourself, you sometimes have to lose yourself first.

MARGARET BROUGHTON, Literary Fiction Reader
This is a well written, absorbing and fast moving coming of age story involving the ugliness and beauty of life. Marianne at 17 is a very clever girl but also a bit of a loner. When her much loved grandfather and friend dies she becomes more isolated and confused with her parents and school. In a year we clearly see the disasters of the downward spiraling path she follows, and it is a wonder that she survives. Her sense of self and loss are deeply felt by the reader. Near the end of the novel she makes the decision to reclaim life and with the help of love and music matures with wisdom, insight, and conscious understanding of herself.

WARREN THURSTON, Pentales,
This is a good story that makes the reader feel the highs and lows of Marianne as if they are their own. It reminds me of the style adopted by the Russian writer Dostoyevsky. He had the ability to get the reader to feel exactly what his characters felt; a gift Magdalena ball has too. Sleep Before Evening is a well written insight into human suffering. The author shows an in-depth knowledge of how to hold readers attention, and make them eager to know more. This is a debut novel that shows the author has many more novels inside her, which will provoke strong emotions in readers of her work.