'Sleepless' - Charlie Huston (Orion Books)

As a rule I don’t have too many problems getting to sleep, staying asleep is the problem... If the slightest ray of light comes through the window then that’s it, I’m awake and there’s no way I’m getting back to sleep! Every so often though, I’ll lay in bed for hours and sleeping just will not happen. There’s something nice about laying there, listening to the birds quieten down for the night and then (hours later) hearing them start to wake up again. What’s not so nice though is having to get through the following day on no sleep at all...
Now take that scenario and stretch it out for days on end, even months. No sleep at all and a gradual descent into madness and death as the pressure on your brain grows. If that’s something that your imagination isn’t comfortable with then you don’t have to imagine it at all. Charlie Huston has done all the hard work there and all you have to do is step on board for the journey. It’s not a pleasant ride but it’s one that’s well worth taking...

A plague of sleeplessness means a fatal dose of insomnia for the city of Los Angeles and cops like Parker Haas are left to pick up the pieces in a city that is gradually coming apart at the seams. In the midst of riots, suicide bombings and the surreal behaviour of the sleepless Parker Haas’ strict moral code makes him the ideal cop to crack the black market for ‘Dreamer’, the only drug that can give the sleepless any kind of relief (although it’s not a cure). Parker’s family situation lends him added impetus to do the right thing, his wife has the disease and it’s possible that his newborn daughter has it as well...
Parker Haas is in way over his head though and he doesn’t realise it. This case is about to lead him into contact with a hired killer whose work is defined by aesthetic perfection as well big businesses who have their own reasons for the situation being managed as it is. Will Parker come out of this alive? More importantly, will his daughter...?

Charlie Huston is a brutal writer in many ways; some of these add a lot of positive things to an excellent book but others only serve to detract from it...

If you’re reading a book by Charlie Huston then you know that you’re not going to be spared a single one of the traumatic punches that inevitably come flying your way. Huston knows that his leading characters have hit rock bottom and he adjusts the style and flow of his narrative to match. If Parker Haas is going through some rough times then Huston will be letting you know exactly what that means in no uncertain terms. What’s the point otherwise? The upshot is that the reader is given the clearest of pictures in terms of what it means to live in a city that is teetering on the precipice of self destruction. Every page is an exercise in either the madness of sleep deprivation or the constant daily struggle of wondering just when it’s all going to happen to you next. The reader gets both sides of this all encapsulated in the relationship between Parker and his wife; a relationship that’s painful in it’s honesty but compelling through the way that Huston gets right into his character’s heads and lays their souls bare on the page.
Other characters deal with the situation in different ways, most notably by retreating into the virtual world of online games, and it all adds up to a picture of survival that’s as diverse as only humans could make it. Huston’s honesty really has you wondering if this is the way that it would all go if the world suddenly stopped sleeping...

If this wasn’t enough for you, Charlie Huston writes a damn good story to sit against the apocalyptic backdrop. The original mystery to be solved is worth the price of entry on it’s own along with the importance of the sub-plot of Parker and his wife (something where I absolutely had to see how it ended) but then you realise that it’s all about something else entirely...
It’s at this point that all bets are off and anything can happen. And it does. Huston turns things upside down and although you may not agree with what certain characters are doing you cannot deny that everything is done with the best possible intentions. When the world is ending, all you can do is try and save something for those that are left over. Huston doesn’t leave a stone unturned either, everything fits together by the end of the story (even those bits that you thought would never fit in anywhere...)
I was in two minds about the effectiveness of revealing the source of the outbreak of sleeplessness at the end of the book. While the origin of the disease comes out from far enough left field to be a real surprise, it was far enough out there to lack a connection with the disease that would have provided a real impact. Maybe some things are better left unsaid...

‘Sleepless’ is a brutal novel but one that can suffer from this brutality. Huston doesn’t pander to his reader; he’s here to tell a story the way it is and if you don’t like it then you’re more than welcome to put the book down and go read something else. The combination of perspectives in ‘Sleepless’ (two of which are the same person) make this a book that is hard to get into until you find it’s rhythm. Huston doesn’t signpost these changes (that’s not what he’s about) and leaves you to get to grips with it as best you can. I’m not ashamed to admit that I floundered a bit until I worked out how things stood. Huston is also not afraid to jump backwards and forwards in time and this made for some difficult reading at the climax of the novel, at least as far as I was concerned. I had to go back and re-read those passages a few times to be sure that I’d got it...
In short, ‘Sleepless’ is an uncompromising novel that asks its readers to do all the running. If you’re after an easy ‘comfort read’ then this book probably isn’t for you!

Having said all that though, if you’re ready to do some running then ‘Sleepless’ is a book full of rewards for those who ready to go looking for them. Not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination but one that I very much enjoyed.

Nine and a Quarter out of Ten