Review: A Sleepless Future
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 26, 2014
Imagine an America where insomnia becomes virulent. Where sleeping pills no longer provide relief to the sleepless. Where dreams must be donated by healthy sleepers to save the lives of those whose insomnia could kill. This is the America created by Karen Russell in Sleep Donation, a science fiction novella so rich in imagery and mood that I can almost forgive its meandering plot and unresolved conflict.The story is told by Trish Edgewater, the star recruiter for Slumber Corps, a non-profit agency that coordinates the donation of REM sleep to insomniacs. After seven years of soliciting donations, Edgewater begins to question the ethics of Slumber Corps and her role in the agency, a role that is complicated by new donors, "Baby A" and "Donor Y". Yet much of the conflict in the novella is psychological, since its protagonist, though intelligent, is passive. Edgewater observes the dysfunctional world around her with exquisite detail and ironic commentary, but cannot move forward and sadly neither can the story. I found Karen Russell's cerebral vision of a sleepless future as seductive and as aimless as a dream.Perhaps that was the point.