Karen Russell
Atavist Books
Ebook Only
March 25, 2014
Idgie Says:
A fascinating look into the future where people die of lack of sleep. Not only do they die, but if they are some of the lucky few to receive "sleep donations", they can become infected with the nightmares of others - rather like a dirty sleep hypodermic being used on 1,000 people to save money.
For some reason this story rather reminds me of Atwood's Handmaiden Tale, in the writing where it doesn't always spell things out, but keeps a fuzzy layer between the facts and reader - not a bad thing at all, it lets your imagination run wild. But other parts are incredibly detailed, showing that Karen really put some thought into how this situation could be handled, should it really happen.
A nice sized novella, ebook format only.
Book Description:
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.