They say that "Sleeping in the Sun" is one of his greatest works, set in a second artistic period that the Argentinean had and that made his new novels give off an air of fantasy to a certain extent. But of course, we have to grasp that term, "fantastic", because fantasy in here is a more slight and unexpected break to reality than anything else more expected as magic, witchcraft or paranormal elements. No, here everything is a neighborhood of Buenos Aires, everything is to investigate in a genial way inside a man, Lucho Bordenave, to explore the marshy way of love, to enter fully in the life with capital letters. And at a certain moment, Pam, the fantastic. With dialogues that could already be art in themselves, Bioy Casares presents here this Lucho Bordenave, who is writing a letter (which will occupy approximately 95% of the novel) to someone who at the moment we don't know who he is but who wants to convince that what counts am true. And what counts? That's what we're going to do.
Bordenave begins to tell this person (later he will turn out to be a childhood friend, who answers his letter with another letter, in the remaining 5%) his love story with Diana, his wife. We know that Diana was admitted when she was young in a psychiatric hospital, we know that Lucho knows himself to be "a dumb one" and that is why he speaks as such, we know that his wife has strange behaviors, that Lucho constantly wonders if he really loves her. During this intimate questioning, Standley, a German dog trainer, appears. I forgot to mention that one of Diana's obsessions is dogs. He wants one, he's always wanted one, but they don't have it. Standley appears and convinces her with her dog battles. In that convince her Diana goes with him and, surprisingly, she ends up in what during all the novel will be called the "Frenopathic Institute". Lucho won't understand the reason for that (neither will we) and from that moment on everything will be a miss to Diana and an attempt to recover her at all costs. In the meantime, Lucho will buy a dog that, coincidentally, will be called Diana. After many headaches, he will recover his wife, but she will no longer be the same. And it will be then when poor Lucho, whom we will love and hate equally, discovers that the doctors of the Frenopathic what they have done with his Diana is to put the soul of another woman, a woman whom they had educated in the life of Diana, a much more submissive woman. Yes, it is strange. Now we understand "fantastic," don't we?
But of course, they've changed Diana, and she won't be the same anymore. In principle, everything has to be better for Lucho, or so she has been promised. His wife will no longer have those obsessions she used to have, she will no longer leave home unannounced, she will no longer treat him the way she treated him. And all that is true, but maybe Lucho fell in love with that Diana, the one before, the one who had "taras", as we all have. There is the "impossibility of love" that is spoken of on the back cover of the book as the fundamental theme of the work. The impossibility of love but also of communication because everything will be complicated for Lucho when he wants to say what he wants to say. And everything will go wrong. Lucho will also end up in the Frenopathic. And this is not a spoiler. And he will be able to escape. And more will happen. And all in little more than 200 pages. With suspense, intrigue, philosophy, and humor. Finish everything with the answer to the letter. And your head will just explode.
Sleeping in the sun, which takes its name from a sleeping tactic that the doctor of the Frenopathic has (to think that you are a big dog stretched out in the sun in a big wood that goes down a big river and that is rocking and sleeping), is, basically, a little madness. But it is a little madness that encloses within a surprising simplicity many, many things: great truths about love, very twentieth conceptions about personal relationships, universal thoughts about oneself and about life both as a couple and in society. Who are we when we are alone? Who are we when we are in a couple? Who are we when we are in a group? Those masks, all those layers that a human being can have (or in this case a man, because, yes, he focuses a lot on man, maybe too much) are explored by a "dork", and that "dork" you can't imagine how much he teaches you. And how much he is going to teach you. Because Sleeping in the sun is one of those selfish books that keep teachings for new eye readings that have already gone through them. Read it as many times as you want, the truth is that it is very good.