Sleeping Children belongs to that ever-growing, still very chic genre: the novel that is perhaps better described as a memoir. Were it not for the fact that Anthony Passeron’s publisher labels this a work of fiction, we would likely consider it an elegant example of autobiographically tinged non-fiction and think no more about classifications. But the ‘novel’ tag complicates matters. Which bits, we wonder, are made up? Are the occasional dabs of descriptive prose and a certain shapeliness in the overall design enough to qualify a book as a novel? 

With autofiction – the most popular name for this kind of writing – it’s hard to avoid getting stuck on these questions. This is unfortunate in the case of Sleeping Children, because Passeron doesn’t seem particularly concerned with exploring the boundaries between fact and fiction. The facts in front of him are substantial enough. The novel (if we must) tells the story of his uncle Désiré, a heroin user who, along with his wife and daughter, fell victim to AIDS in the early years of the epidemic. It’s an account of individual lives lost to a terrifying and brutal virus, interspersed with reportage-like bulletins about the efforts of the medical authorities to deal with the disease. Only Passeron and his family would be able to identify what, if anything, is invented here. 

Sleeping Children isn’t written in a particularly ‘novelistic’ style. Artistic licence is only rarely employed. ‘The meaningless drone of the receiver reminded her of her helplessness,’ we’re told about a phone conversation half a century ago, in a clear instance of imaginative filling-in. Standing by the phone is Passeron’s