[Beyond the Bedroom Wall] is a search for lost time, a book of remembrance, where desire, sleep, memory and death intertwine. (p. 38)

The novel's title reflects Proust's influence, mixing the wonder and fear of childhood with a dreamlike hint of the sexual jealousy Freud found basic to family life…. The North Dakota and Illinois of this work are like the terrain of dreams, a wide, continuous plain that seems forever cold or on the edge of winter. And for anyone who has lived there, this is the "reality" of the Middle West; one's life there is always remembered against a succession of gray skies whose clouds may break at any moment to reveal a deep blue as endless as the flat land.

But the similarity to Proust ends at this level. Woiwode does not try to duplicate Proust's grand "symphonic" design; his story is told from many points...