Sleep Over by H.G. Bells

The first thing I have to say about Sleep Over: An Oral History of the Apocalypse (hereafter referred to as ”Sleep Over”) is that I genuinely have no idea why I requested to read it. As a reluctant gift recipient of short stories/anthologies/essays/collections et al., I don’t seek out books that lack a cohesive, consistent storyline throughout. So, why I chose to read a book that is quite literally nothing more than a collection of narratives through dozens of viewpoints, all relating to the same period of time, is beyond me.

The second thing I have to say about Sleep Over is that I am genuinely thrilled that I requested to read it.

Sleep Over is a collection of first-hand stories by survivors of the event/plague/situation that almost eradicated humanity—no, it’s not nuclear war or SARS or global warming…it’s insomnia. What you may assume could pose no greater threat than irritability and malaise, insomnia is actually quite terrifying and insidious when observed through a more critical lens. Author H.G. Bells doesn’t have time for Doubting Thomas’ and makes quick work of your cynicism before you’re even 100 words in:

The end of the world began not with something happening, but with something not happening. And because we don’t do well with understanding danger from absence, and most people didn’t know that going without sleep is fatal, the whole world began to die.

What follows are accounts of “the longest day” by a veritable smorgasbord of characters, from a nighttime film projectionist, energy spray company owner, pediatric nurse, and taxi driver, to a coffee shop owner, teacher, cop, gamer, and monk. Initially people are just a bit curious and nonplussed about collectively being unable to sleep, especially considering that the difference in time zones means some people didn’t experience the insomnia until almost one full day after others. People are a little tired, grumpy, and maybe a bit sluggish, but it's more of an oddity than a pandemic at first. But as the days progress and sleep still eludes all humans (other species are unaffected), the danger becomes starkly apparent: Not just the pure biological ramifications, but the sociological and psychological ones as well.

This is where I’ll leave the remainder of the stories to the author (and contributors) and share the Good and the Bad of Sleep Over.

The Good:

-It’s scarily relatable: 

Bells does an outstanding job of verbalizing how you feel when you’re tired…and then exhausted…and then so beyond the feeling that the world starts to tilt on you. “Words take so long to think of. Words take ages to form properly…if it takes too many more words from me I shall have to kill it, and with it, me.” I found myself empathizing so much with the contributors that I was fighting off yawns and anxiety as their situations became ever more desperate.

-It’s disturbing: 

This may not be a “pro” for everyone, but I found it very effective. Not far into the book you learn that expectant mothers throughout the world are going into early labor and, without the body’s ability to heal, regenerate, and thrive through rest, 20% of mothers and 90% of babies die almost immediately after birth. In fact, kids are affected more powerfully sooner because their brains aren’t developed fully, so they’re the first group to exhibit the archetypes that develop: Starers(are technically living, but behave as though in a trance and need to be manually manipulated to eat and move), Dreamers (they see hallucinations, which often leave them open to danger, like jumping off of roofs), and Screamers (think Dreamers, but if the hallucinations were never-ending nightmares). That’s to say nothing of the other abhorrent behavior people succumb to when society starts to crumble.

-The writing is haunting: 

This book is full of pitch black poetry that is all at once horrifying and honest.

I opened the door, but outside was only a mirror. The man there did look like me, and had terrible wounds, and a tooth missing, gums bleeding. I will shoot him now

For it’s not enough to say that we looked tired. It was like we were dead men walking. The slackness in our faces was broken through by micro expressions of extreme anguish and terror, and above all despair.

…a little girl that, if the circumstances had been different, if I had been a tollbooth attendant and they were passing by, I might have mistaken for being asleep. But the color was wrong in the face.

The Bad:

-The resolution: 

The fact that “the longest day” ends is not a secret throughout the book. But, without going into spoiler-zone specifics, I was very disappointed with how it was explained. Maybe it was the most realistic ending possible in a book so true to real life, but I guess I was greedy in wanting something more.

-Uneven pacing: 

The majority of the stories were short, some barely a page, others no more than two or three. But then randomly there would be pages and pages of the same story, which, more often than not, wasn’t nearly as interesting as the shorter ones. If the rest of the stories had been longer in length, this may not have bothered me so much, but as it was I found the change in momentum tedious and annoying.

-A lack of distinct voices: 

This was the weakest part of the book for me. While the writing was excellent and the characters spanned gender, age, social status, education, religion, nationality, and country, they all sounded essentially the same. As a matter of fact, I was pretty shocked to find out Bells is a woman, and not a man, as I felt the tone had a “white, middle-aged, middle-class man” affectation. I won’t pretend that taking on dozens of unique voices is an easy feat, but it did affect my suspension of disbelief throughout.

TL;DR:
Take it from someone who doesn’t even like this style of writing, Sleep Over is an engaging, haunting, disturbing, thought-provoking, unique read that you won’t want to put down…as long as you can manage to ignore the power of suggestion and stay awake. I think this has the makings of a real sleeper hit (ha!).

I received an ARC eBook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.