Sleep Donation
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'Sleep Donation has a dreamlike beauty while remaining ominous and off-kilter. Parts of it gave me nightmares' Stephen King
An epidemic of insomnia has left America crippled with exhaustion.
Thankfully the Slumber Corps agency provides a lifeline, transfusing sleep to sufferers from healthy volunteers. Recruitment manager Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the disaster, has spent the last seven years enlisting new donors. But when she meets the mysterious Donor Y and Baby A – whose sleep can be universally accepted – her faith in the organisation and in her own motives begins to unravel.
Fully illustrated and featuring a brand-new 'Nightmare Appendix', this uncanny and prescient novella from the bestselling author of Swamplandia! will haunt your sleepless nights.
Praise for Sleep Donation:
‘Russell's ability to balance the quirky and the absurd with psychological acumen…turns this unbelievable world into something more than dreamlike’ NPR
‘Russell writes with such assurance and speed that she puts the reader under a spell for the duration of her story’ New York Times
‘Russell has a keen sense of dramatic timing and an even sharper ability to turn an internal state into its own weather system’ Boston Globe
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 2013 Macarthur Fellow Russell's (Swamplandia!) speculative novella, a mysterious "insomnia epidemic" has become a national concern, generating 24/7 news coverage, as well as ubiquitous "Night Worlds" and sleep wards. Fortunately, a technology has also been developed whereby machines can siphon healthy sleep from donators for transfer to those in need. Trish Edgewater, Pennsylvania-based Slumber Corps' oldest and most valued volunteer, uses her deceased sister Dori's story of "terminal insomnia" to frighten potential donors into offering up their contributions. Her top recruit is the glorified Baby A, the infant daughter of Felix and Justine Harkonnen. Both parents have granted the necessary signatory consent, but Felix makes it known that he opposes his daughter's copious donations while Justine insists that it is an honorable concession. When the "sleep blend" supply is contaminated by the nightmare sleep of Donor Y, matters are complicated even further for the Corps. People become increasingly afraid to donate, and many of those who have contracted the nightmare turn into "elective insomniacs" as Donor Y's nightmare is so hard to bear that it leads some to suicide. The story raises questions of ethical conduct, personal responsibility, and free will as Trish begins to second-guess her own "pitch" methods and discovers that her bosses, former CEOs Jim and Rudy Storch, have been outsourcing sleep on the black market. Trish is left to figure out whether or not to blow the whistle on her employers, and whether the consequences of such actions are worth it. Narrated by Trish, the book succeeds in conveying her internal conflict, but the short length leaves a number of questions unexplored, including the motives and background of the supporting characters. As a whole, the story fails to shed much light on the world around Trish, making this novella somewhat hollow.
