Reading Journal 2023: Sleep
Author: Lynn Biederstadt
Picked this up at my local bookshop. A random paperback with an alluring and interesting cover. Felt like it would be a good fit for spooky season, and it turned out to be a decent page turner. It’s not out and out scary as far as horror goes, but it’s the sort of thing that works to unsettle you psychologically.
It’ follows a photo journalist, a wealthy man with issues, a murderer, and a sleep specialist, all of whom are being targeted by Sleep.
As the synopsis says, Sleep is waiting to rip the world apart, and when that’s the case, even the insomnia becomes a nightmare. Much of the unsettledness of it all relates to the existential crisis of sleeps association with deat.h. certainly there is terror in imagining the dream giving way to nothingness, but the real struggle here is depicted as more of an engagement with the true terrors that huant us in our sleep. Not the things that end life, but the things that redner life meaningless.
If that sounds heavy, it’s actually more entertaining than a deep philopshical exploration. But there is enough substance here to keep it real.
The Stories of my Life 