nod

Between a child's progress from a heavenly world to a world that is a likeness of heaven and then to a world which is delivered and upheld by a dream of heaven, there is only the world.

from NOD, which begins:

And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod -

so, under the rubric of a nursery rhyme, proceeds Fanny Howe's tenth book of fiction. ... the arch and caustic skepticism of what follows: "Meanwhile the father thought his wife was seeing through him. The fact is, he had for many years been subject to depression and his only way of surmounting this was to seduce with intense..."