Author: Kenneth Calhoun
Publisher: Hogarth
Publication Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 9780804137140
Number of Pages: 288
How I Got It: NetGalley
Format: Kindle
Goodreads Description:
Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows. Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, has succumbed to the telltale red-rimmed eyes, slurred speech and cloudy mind before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world. Yet Biggs can still sleep, and dream, so he sets out to find her.
He ventures out into a world ransacked by mass confusion and desperation, where he meets others struggling against the tide of sleeplessness. Chase and his buddy Jordan are devising a scheme to live off their drug-store lootings; Lila is a high school student wandering the streets in an owl mask, no longer safe with her insomniac parents; Felicia abandons the sanctuary of a sleep research center to try to protect her family and perhaps reunite with Chase, an ex-boyfriend. All around, sleep has become an infinitely precious commodity. Money can’t buy it, no drug can touch it, and there are those who would kill to have it. However, Biggs persists in his quest for Carolyn, finding a resolve and inner strength that he never knew he had.
Kenneth Calhoun has written a brilliantly realized and utterly riveting depiction of a world gripped by madness, one that is vivid, strange, and profoundly moving.
My Review:
I had great hopes for this book. Who can't relate to insomnia in this age of round the clock work expections and encroaching technology? I was ready for a dystopian drama playing my nightly dread of not getting enough sleep but instead got all of the horror with none of the Patient 0 /origin / reason that makes a story like this work. The scenes were great but the "climax" was so disappointing that I found myself extremely frustrated that I had put the hours into reading such a let-down. Not since Stephen King's Under the Dome have I been this disappointed in a dystopian novel.
** I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review **
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