Customer Reviews

Inspired Sleep: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Cohen has won numerous awards, and I can't quite understand why his
name and sales don't rank right up there with other contemporary writers
like Michael Chabon and Tom Perrotta. In INSPIRED SLEEP, Cohen examines the
public's dependence on/love affair with prescription drugs such as
anti-depressants. Chapters rotate between the perspective of two main
characters --Bonnie Saks, a divorced mother of two, and Ian Ogelvie, a
psychiatrist/researcher on a project designed to enhance REM sleep and
thereby elevate the subject's mood. Saks is an insomniac who becomes a
subject in Ogelvie's study at "Boston General" hospital. The novel explores
a lot of big issues -- such as the way today's medical researchers are in
bed with big pharma -- and all the room for corruption/lapses of ethics that
can create. The book also looks at the potential impact of placebos,
explained in detail by Ian as expectancy theory -- the idea that merely
wanting something to come true can bring about its fruition. It's
fascinating to watch the varied perspectives -- Bonnie's a cynic, who is
depressed about her life -- and Ian is an idealist, who has complete faith
in the medical model, believing that one day medicine can find a
drug-related cure for every human ailment -- emotional and physical. As much
as this book will get you thinking, though, the greatest joy comes from the
way Cohen writes. He drafts some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever
read. If you like this one, go back and read The Here and Now and The Organ
Builder. Both are terrific reads as well.

I read this lovely book on vacation and was, as a result, a little dubious of its true merit. After all, what isn't a great book when you are on the beach reading it? However, I reread it in my own habitat and am convinved that Robert Cohen is on to something. Bonnie is neither cute nor evil. She is frustrated, disappointed, and anxious about her children, her unplanned pregnancy, her husband's flaky departure to South America and all the other imperfect aspects of her life in Cambridge. On top of all this, she can't get to sleep. She thinks everything else would recede in importance if only she could get 40 winks.

Ian Ogelvie is the quintessential academic rising star. Fellowships and grants have rained down upon him since he started school and now, facing 30, he is on the brink of a pharmaceutical breakthrough that could seal his fate...and save Bonnie's neck. So, Cohen has them meet and the results are insightful, funny, critical, and real. It is neither love story nor thriller. It is merely the story of a handful of characters whose desires and fears blind them to simple solutions their lives offer.

This novel was witty in the way our own lives would be clever if we weren't desperately trying to figure out where they were going. I don't think it's necessary to rebut the one harsh review written of this book, but I would encourage anyone with the slightest bit of interest in seeing what the fuss is about to click and order. This book will interest you. You know people like these. Some of you, perhaps the most honest ones, realize that you are people like these.

Robert Cohen is a brilliant stylist who whose words are a delight to read, and the premise of this novel proves fertile ground for Cohen's apt powers of observation and deft humor. "Inspired Sleep's" two main characters are Bonnie Saks, a struggling grad student and mother suffering from insomnia; and Ian Ogelive, an ambitious but emotionally confused young researcher working in a sleeping lab. Put them together, and the big ideas begin to fly: academia, the role of anti-depressants in contemporary culture, the nature of marriage, the nature of parenthood, etc. Cohen is especially skillful at piling on the clever observations in witty dialogue that, while never quite believable, never seems exactly unbelievable either. In fact, the quirky nature of these characters seems absolutely apt, for Cohen is interested in putting his finger on the bizarre nature of contemporary society: how we look for meaning in things like prescription drugs and chat rooms. And what he comes up with is a great deal of fun to read.

I very much enjoyed Cohen's previous novel, "The Here and Now," though I thought it ultimately suffered from the same problem as a lot of contemporary novels of ideas: it did not know how to end, and the resolution seemed forced and overly intellectualized. "Inspired Sleep" has a much more natural and organic plot structure, which worked nicely in its favor. Like Cohen's previous novel, this one deals with not entirely likable characters who are on a quest to, if not make themselves more likable, at least remove some the difficulties in their lives that render them so unpleasant. In the case of "Inspired Sleep," I feel that Cohen goes a little bit overboard at times with Bonnie. Ian may be a bit of a bumbler in matters of the heart, but his difficulties are ones I think most people can identify with, and his mistakes seem very human. Bonnie, on the other hand, frequently comes across as noting short of a jerk. She is perpetually rude to other people, and she is not charming enough to pull it off. Not that characters need to be likable to be interesting, but I was never entirely certain what Cohen wanted us to make of Bonnie. There is a moment early on in the novel which I loved: Bonnie thinks something rude, and then faces some evidence that suggests she spoke these rude words aloud without meaning too. That device proved very effective, a kind of rudeness we can sympathize with. On other occasions, however, she seems to delight in her verbal cruely, and that left me feeling a bit cold. I don't want to suggest that I subscribe to the Oprah-like belief that for characters to be interesting we must be able to internalize their qualities, but I think if a character is consistantly nasty, it makes it hard to want to follower her narrative or care about her struggles.

I feel the need to address a review posted below this one, which complains of the book's dealings with the "bloodless overanalytical tepid world of academia," a comment so problematic and so unfair, I hardly know where to begin. I see no reason why academia should be thought of as more "bloodless" as anything else with the possible exception of surgery or warfare, and I find it infuriating that a reader should criticize a novel because of his or her own anti-intellectual leanings. The observation that "no one in this book actually works for a paycheck" shows that someone was paying poor attention to the novel, since there are several characters who have no relationship with academia, besides which the premise that academics don't work for their paycheck is laughable. Academics work harder, for less money, than just about anyone. This book is not, as this viewer suggests, a faculty novel in disguise. It is something much more interesting than that: it deals with how the ideas that are developed and circulated by academia - both intellectual ideas and scientific ideas (in the form of prescription) medicine - become, for good and for ill, part of mainstream culture.

With her ex-husband in Chile making films, Bonnie Saks, stressed out and 40-ish, finds herself the sole support of her two sons in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a doctoral candidate who has lost interest in her thesis, and a victim of insomnia. Like many other academic women, she is trying unsuccessfully to make ends meet as a college lecturer.

It's hard to work up a lot of sympathy for Bonnie, however. She seems to revel in her stress, using it as an excuse. Unlike thousands of other busy lecturers, she is irresponsible, never getting around to grading the papers for the writing course she is paid to teach (and for which her students pay tuition). She can't get motivated to try to find a new approach to her thesis so she can finish it, get her doctorate, and support her children more effectively. She often leaves her two sons, one of whom is disturbed and the other of whom cries out for more attention, in the care of a semiliterate teenage babysitter who is also irresponsible and often on drugs. She sleeps around and doesn't take precautions, leading to an unplanned pregnancy. And despite the pregnancy, she continues to drink and smoke--and sleep around. When, desperate for sleep, she decides to participate in a pill-induced sleep study, she blithely accepts the word of the researcher that the pills or drugs she takes will not hurt her unborn baby.

The supporting characters are similarly unable to recognize the true nature of their problems, looking for Timothy Leary-ish answers in pharmaceuticals, alcohol, sex, frantic academic research, and pointless activity, something which made this whole plot, for me, less than the "sweet," "lovely," and "charming" experience that some other readers experienced, though parts of it are undeniably amusing in their irony.

Still, the book is beautifully written, and the prose is glorious! One gorgeous description after another describes Bonnie's entry into sleep. Upon entering a dream state, she finds "the very air a kind of pale, trembling jelly that offered resistance and envelopment both....It was like entering a Rothko...borne up by an ineffable heat mist, immersed in sunbursts of yellow and red, the primary colors of being....And then a silent trumpet blew, and the mortar of opposition in her head began to crumble..." Such description makes me anxious to read Cohen's next novel, when his characters may be more thoughtful, their lives more inspiring, and their travails more worthy of the wonderful talents on display here.

This book belongs alongside DeLillo's WHITE NOISE and Cheever's BULLET PARK. It is an entertaining and incisive glimpse into the US at the beginning of the 21st century, with scathingly on-target observations of academia, addiction, love, children, divorce, liberalism, Thoreau, Macbeth, chat rooms, street crime, scholarly journals, English Composition, multinational corporations, and, of course, sleep. The prose is exquisite--modern without being obscure, witty without being pedantic, touching without being self-pitying. It's as if Philip Roth or Saul Bellow had dipped into David Foster Wallace's copy of the Physician's Desk Reference. Like the previous reviewer, I can't understand why I'm not seeing this book all over the place and yet, so far, apart from Amazon.com, I've seen it in only one bookstore.

This is a reply, not a review; I wouldn't foist my prejudices on strangers. But I'm moved by Guernseybookman's mean-minded attack to add a word or two in favor of a book whose mixture of sweetness, wit and fatalistic wisdom seems to have disarmed everyone else below. I don't think "the only saving grace" is that the book is written "quite well" but that it is written beautifully, which is not to say preciously. There's a lucidity that puts the (characters') muddle in relief and makes re-reading a constant temptation. The characters are "unappealing"? By my reading, only one is meant to appeal; and she's seductively companionable. "The ideas are confused"? Yes, every bit as confused as those in, say, Forster. What's remarkable is that these ideas matter so much to Cohen's characters and that they're one of the reasons his characters matter so much to a reader who doesn't insist on opinions which confirm his prejudices.

This is clearly the work of a writer to follow.

First, I agree with all of the reviewers who commented on how well-written the book was. Cohen is simply an excellent writer who really can string words together beautifully. I was particularly impressed by little touches such as Cress' book report on Macbeth, where he has to write as a 15-year old like Cress might write, and the E-mail exchanges, and the E-Mail exchanges. The dialogue is great too. I really admire his talent. In addition, I don't necessarily agree with those who criticized the entire cast of characters in the book, as if to throw them all in a pot together. However, I did find all the chapters about Bonnie and her world (Larry Albeit, Cress, her kids etc.) to be much more interesting than the chapters about Ian and his world (Heflin, Marisa Chu, Erway, Eddie, etc.). And therein lies a problem: As the novel went on, while there is obviously some intersection between Bonnie's life and Ian's life, it seemed that Ian and his world took center stage more and more while Bonnie and her group got pushed to the sidelines. Not completely of course, but enough to annoy. I would have enjoyed more about Bonnie & Co. and less about Ian & Co. It also seemed to me as if, except for one twist, the ending seemed to fizzle out a little, as if the author lost some of his focused edge. Nevertheless, still a fine novel.

Extremely successful novel that takes the premise - whether prescribed mind drugs have any useful purpose - and explores it in a compelling fashion. Cohen writes in a way that gets under the characters' skins. Quite unusual in contemporary literature, this one is so well researched, so relevant, it was impossible to put down.

It did however leave me feeling as if I too had taken the drugs and experienced the highs and lows together with Bonnie and Eddie. By the end I was emotionally drained, wrung out, but in a good way!

This is a reply, not a review; I wouldn't foist my prejudices on strangers. But I'm moved by Guernseybookman's mean-minded attack to add a word or two in favor of a book whose mixture of sweetness, wit and fatalistic wisdom seems to have disarmed everyone else below. I don't think "the only saving grace" is that the book is written "quite well" but that it is written beautifully, which is not to say preciously. There's a lucidity that puts the (characters') muddle in relief and makes re-reading a constant temptation. The characters are "unappealing"? By my reading, only one is meant to appeal; and she's seductively companionable. "The ideas are confused"? Yes, every bit as confused as those in, say, Forster. What's remarkable is that these ideas matter so much to Cohen's characters and that they're one of the reasons his characters matter so much to a reader who doesn't insist on opinions which confirm his prejudices.

This is clearly the work of a writer to follow.

I had to push myself complete this book. The author is intelligent and has many keen observations and mind opening views -- however this doens't add up to a good novel. The plot (did I miss it?) went nowhere. The characters were one dimensional -- they never felt true to me. Instead they seemed only representative of a certain life situation. The one redeaming quality of this book is the "truth in advertising" nature of the title -- it did indeed inspire me to sleep.