Sleep Donation

 

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Title: Sleep Donation
Author: Karen Russell
Publisher: Atavist Books
Release Date: 3.25.14

Publisher’s Summary

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Swamplandia!, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, an imaginative and haunting novella about an insomnia epidemic set in the near future.

A crisis has swept America. Hundreds of thousands have lost the ability to sleep. Enter the Slumber Corps, an organization that urges healthy dreamers to donate sleep to an insomniac. Under the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers the Corps' reach has grown, with outposts in every major US city. Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia, has spent the past seven years recruiting for the Corps. But Trish’s faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter when she is confronted by “Baby A,” the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious "Donor Y."

Sleep Donation explores a world facing the end of sleep as we know it, where “Night Worlds” offer black market remedies to the desperate and sleep deprived, and where even the act of making a gift is not as simple as it appears.


My Review

Originally published in 2014, this novella has been on my "want to read" list for a while. I am very interested (and invested) in the personal and social constructs as well as the scientific process of sleep. Why do we do it? How much do we really need? How have our needs changed over the centuries? Why is it so hard to fall asleep sometimes and so easy other times? I could go on and on. 

This novella puts readers into an extremely believable near-future where a worldwide epidemic of insomnia is literally killing people. Sleep can be donated to the suffering insomniacs through the Slumber Corp program which makes the donation of sleep as easy as our current blood donation systems. Reliant on Trish to constantly relive her sister's death in order to convince sleepers to donate, Slumber Corp preys on their employees and their potential donors. They give lip service to their altruism (recipients and donors are never charged) but how are they really funding their national program? 

Written in the same style as her previous works, Sleep Donation features scenic descriptions, open-ended storytelling, and pushes readers to question the line between realism and speculative fiction. 

Suggested Reading:

• If you are a Gen-X woman like me and want to know more about the sleep epidemic hitting our generation, I strongly suggest you read Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun (read my review HERE.) 
• Sarah Pinborough also has a thriller, Insomnia releasing 4.12.22 that looks like it will be both disturbing and relatable.