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Sleep Donation: A Novella (Kindle Single) by [Karen Russell]

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Karen Russell

Sleep Donation: A Novella (Kindle Single) Kindle Edition

by Karen Russell (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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From the author of the New York Times bestseller Swamplandia!, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, an imaginative and haunting novella about an insomnia epidemic set in the near future.

A crisis has swept America. Hundreds of thousands have lost the ability to sleep. Enter the Slumber Corps, an organization that urges healthy dreamers to donate sleep to an insomniac. Under the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers the Corps’ reach has grown, with outposts in every major US city. Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia, has spent the past seven years recruiting for the Corps. But Trish’s faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter when she is confronted by “Baby A,” the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious “Donor Y.”

Sleep Donation explores a world facing the end of sleep as we know it, where “Night Worlds” offer black market remedies to the desperate and sleep deprived, and where even the act of making a gift is not as simple as it appears.

Length: 110 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If Karen Russell isn't careful, she might end up pegged as an SF writer. From the fabulist worlds of her debut, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, to the whimsical realities of many stories in 2013's Vampires in the Lemon Grove, much of Russell's fiction feels utterly at home in the annals of 21st-century science fiction and fantasy. Enter Sleep Donation, which takes as its premise the existence of an America where an epidemic of insomnia rages, kept at bay only by the success of a sleep-bank system in which the happily rested donate their sleep to the ailing. Enter the cast: our narrator/heroine whose sister's death by sleep deprivation powers her own sales pitch to potential donors; a miraculous donor ("Baby A") whose pure sleep provides the mother lode of antidotes; and a "Donor Y" whose contaminated sleep infects multitudes before it's even detected. Finally, enter a less surprising knot of plot twists powered by typical human self-interest (corruption, the profit motive), and the resulting novella depicts a nightmarish world that, but for the simple addition of its central epidemiology, looks an awful lot like our own. Suspend your disbelief -- it's a small price to pay for admission to the allegorical world of one of the strongest and most evocative American fiction writers at work today. --Jason Kirk

From Kirkus Reviews

"One of America’s finest fiction writers returns with an audaciously allegorical novella about sleep deprivation in an age of sensory overload... Russell seems to be having some fun here, using the novella form and e-book format to put creative ingenuity to Orwellian use. The year is sometime in the near future, when the omnipresence of communication and connecting devices, the 24-hour news cycle and other sources of overstimulation have turned insomnia into an epidemic, even a plague. Sleep donors (like blood or plasma donors) can be a godsend for those suffering, particularly if those donors sleep undisturbed, without nightmares, like a baby. In this novella, Baby A is the ultimate donor, the silver bullet, the one whose sleep has universal benefits. (Other donors need to be more closely matched, as with blood types.) Our narrator, Trish, has recruited Baby A through the child’s parents and effectively sells the donor program to them by invoking the death of her own sister due to sleep deprivation. But the demands on Baby A eventually frustrate her father—a more reluctant participant than his wife—and he feels more concerned with what Baby A might suffer than with the benefits for society at large... As the plot progresses, Trish feels that both she and Baby A have perhaps been equally exploited. Those who appreciate Russell’s literary alchemy might find this a little too close to science fiction, but it serves as a parable on a number of levels for a world that is recognizably our own.” (Kirkus starred review)

Review

"Ms. Russell creates a new illness. She describes its hold over a futuristic America with "Twilight Zone"-like inventiveness and the energy and brio of natural fantasist with a proclivity for blending the real and the surreal, the psychological and the sci-fi . . . Ms. Russell writes with such assurance and speed that she puts the reader under a spell for the duration of her story. She creates a fully imagined world with its own rituals and rules, and deftly satirizes the media and governmental responses to the plague of sleeplessness . . . it's another testament to her fertile powers of invention."
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"’Sleep Donation’ is a terrific way to start an imprint, a starkly dystopian novella reminiscent of George Saunders in its bleak humor, the directness of its prose. Narrated by Trish Edgewater—whose sister Dori was one of the first casualties of the insomnia epidemic—it is at once a satire of aid organizations and a brittle examination of exploitation and its discontents."
—David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times

"[Karen Russell] is arguably our greatest fantasist writing serious fiction today . . . Russell's novella is a quick, topsy-turvy thriller, that extends her oeuvre into Orwellian territory."
—NPR

"Her new novella shows her MacArthur grant was no fluke... It is signature Russell: a fanciful, droll, elaborately thought-through allegory with a dark center... You will be reading it for the pleasure of Russell’s language, which is acrid, luminous, and deft, and for the way she confuses the ordinary and the marvelous... She is a special kind of magical realist in that she is wholly committed to both registers. When she describes a woman before the onset of the deadly insomnia—'Her hazel eyes were shining and calm, tenanted by a sane woman, tethered to her memories; her face was happy and plump, irrigated by sleep'—you ricochet between recognition and surprise. Recognition because, as a writer, Russell takes nothing for granted. She will chase down every flicker of ordinary experience and return with descriptions of uncanny aptness... Her sentences both resonate with familiarity and startle with beauty... Russell has diagnosed something elemental about the way we grasp for things we may or may not want."
—Slate

"The combination of Russell's dazzling imagination and virtuosic prose adds up to pleasurable sensory overload. WHY E-ONLY It's not surprising that the Pulitzer finalist who gave us the stirring, deeply weird novel Swamplandia! and two cracklingly original short-story collections would make the most of an unconventional format. An e-single that's much longer than a typical short story but shorter than a full-fledged novel allows Russell to hone in on Sleep Donation's premise while exploring all of its possibilities. A-"
—Entertainment Weekly

"Russell specializes in creating fantastical worlds that hum with recognizable rhythms. She excels at marrying the commonplace with the extraordinary."
—Miami Herald

Review

"Sleep Donation has a dreamlike beauty while remaining ominous and off-kilter. Parts of it gave me nightmares—and I'm case-hardened." —Stephen King

"[Written] with Twilight Zone-like inventiveness and the energy and brio of a natural fantasist with a proclivity for blending the real and surreal, the psychological and the sci-fi. . . . [Russell] creates a fully imagined world with its own rituals and rules, and deftly satirizes the media and governmental responses to the plague of sleeplessness. . . . Another testament to her fertile powers of invention." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review

"A starkly dystopian novella reminiscent of George Saunders in its bleak humor, the directness of its prose." —Los Angeles Times

“Russell wrote Sleep Donation over half a decade ago, yet her nightmarish vision of a nation keelhauled by an insomnia epidemic now registers as shockingly prescient. . . . [Russell has] the finest imagination in contemporary fiction. Sleep Donation is Russell at the height of her formidable powers, at once an eerie evocation of a country whose sins have come home to roost, as well as a deeply personal story of grief and terror.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

"Russell's gift is to provide deep immersion in the details, and in Trish's haunting, urgent emotions. . . . Russell offsets . . . expertly induced unease with humour and wry social commentary." —The Guardian

"Wonderful. . . . Like George Saunders, Russell writes with a Swiftian sense of satire. . . . Russell has a keen sense of dramatic timing and an even sharper ability to turn an internal state into its own weather system." —The Boston Globe

“A tense but captivating read, eerie in its prescience. . . . [A] philosophical meditation on dreams and consciousness, and a moving examination of love and empathy.” —BuzzFeed

"The combination of Russell's dazzling imagination and virtuosic prose adds up to pleasurable sensory overload." —Entertainment Weekly

"Russell handles the extraordinary in a humorous manner. . . . Sleep Donation's magical realism flare makes it not your average dystopia." —GQ

“A tense but captivating read, eerie in its prescience. . . . [A] philosophical meditation on dreams and consciousness, and a moving examination of love and empathy.” —BuzzFeed

"Russell specializes in creating fantastical worlds that hum with recognizable rhythms. She excels at marrying the commonplace with the extraordinary." —Miami Herald

"Signature Russell: a fanciful, droll, elaborately thought-through allegory with a dark center. . . . Russell's language . . . is acrid, luminous, and deft. . . . She will chase down every flicker of ordinary experience and return with descriptions of uncanny aptness. . . . Her sentences both resonate with familiarity and startle with beauty." —Slate

"Weird, hilarious, and brilliant." —The Millions

"An audaciously allegorical novella. . . . As engaging as it is provocative." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

KAREN RUSSELL has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, the "5 Under 35" prize from the National Book Foundation, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and daughter. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

ASIN : B00HRGXNQS
Publisher : Atavist Books (March 25, 2014)
Publication date : March 25, 2014
Language: : English
File size : 909 KB
Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 110 pages
Lending : Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #776,078 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #139 in Kindle Singles: Literature & Fiction
- #2,175 in Literary Short Stories
- #59,382 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
395 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		31%
4 star		27%
3 star		24%
2 star		11%
1 star		6%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Ron K

Language Lovers Will Like This

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2016

Verified Purchase

This is advertised as a novella. Amazon suggested a reading time is just over an hour. I am a fast reader and it took me two hours. The wonderfully complex vocabulary and sentence structures were a delight to be appreciated and not rushed. I found myself using a dictionary because I wanted to get a more precise appreciation for what the author wanted me to understand. I like to review books and I give a lot of three and four-star ratings but few five-star ratings. This is a five. I haven’t seen such masterful and creative use of language since William F. Buckley (sorry if any political sensibilities got trampled here).

In the United States, there is a new illness that is attacking more and more people each day. People cannot sleep, but this is not simple insomnia. The new sufferers cannot sleep at all, anytime; they stay awake until they die of exhaustion. This is the premise of Sleep Donation, a short novel by Karen Russell. The novel tells us the new disease is only present in America although only the US is discussed. Three-quarters of the way through the book the disease finally attacks Asian and European countries. How did it get there? That is one of the mysteries in the story.

Two very rich and successful businessmen brothers (think Warren Buffet rich) altruistically abandon their businesses and form an organization that will help the afflicted. Their technology borrows sleep from those who can sleep and gives it to the needy. If the borrowed sleep is pure, the sufferers regenerate their own ability to sleep. The disease is cured for them. The problem is to find donors who can donate pure sleep. There is only one donor, in the US and the world, who has the purity necessary, Baby A. She is not even a year old when she becomes the sole donor of sleep pure enough to cure the ill. She can donate up to six hours sleep per day. Baby A’s mom is pleased to help; the baby’s father less so. A conflict throughout the story is the father’s unwillingness to allow the continued participation of his daughter in saving the world. Trish Edgewater, our hero, will waffle back and forth on the ethics of using the infant hero Baby A. She will be responsible for convincing the parents of the need for continuing donations by the sole pure donor until such time a clone serum can be developed from Baby A’s donations.

The only problem is that this novel made such a profound effect on me that I am going to have to take a break before starting something new. Anything after this book will be less fun.

5 people found this helpful

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Sonya

SPOILER ALERT!

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2016

Verified Purchase

I have to say that I was very excited with the premise of this story. I love the element of familiarity. I feel the same type of respect for “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” story as well. As I read I found its similarity to when one gives blood donations; the white Red Cross van on a jobsite. I thought about how they constantly call and email individuals telling them how important their donation is and especially someone like "Baby A" who has 0+ blood! Lol. So when Donor Y comes along and infects everyone with nightmares, I found this to be parallel to the AIDs incident that infected the blood bank and how so many were afraid to give or receive blood behind this. This story is so amazing to me. The whole idea of insomnia-ridden human beings, sleep donation banks or someone being able to donate their sleep and dreams is definitely a great use of science fiction or possibly horror genre.

I became captivated when she first tells the story of Dori and her death. "I remember studying those eyelashes pasted to her skin, at an angle of unrelieved attention. she blinked at me, her thinking slow as syrup, and I wished that she would not smile again, not ever again, not like that, because by that point every smile was an accident, a twitch driven by nothing that I recognized as human. ..."And I hated the sight of her facial muscles pumpkin-grinning on the pillow, her pale eyes twitching, and I hated watching her go speechless under the conglomerate weight of so much unrelenting looking and thinking and listening and feeling, her mind worn thin by the sound of every cough and the plinking moisture of every raindrop, these noises exploding like grenades through her naked awareness-her mind crushed, in the end, by an avalanche of waking moments.” I love the language. I loved her writing technique.

Although I wanted to know more about each individual person named in this story, I believe this is one of the ways Russell keeps the story in novella form by not adding additional backstories and conflicts. There there but you don’t see them, you only guess about them which also brings a great deal of mystery and suspense. With that being said, I still have to say that if I have any pet peeves with this story, it is the ending! I felt as though I was left to fend for myself for a resolution that fits. There were so many unanswered questions. so this works for one thing but not for the ending.

2 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Interesting Premise

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2020

Verified Purchase

The novella has an interesting premise with some parallels in the modern world, esp. where non-profits and where medicine are concerned. It was written in first person, which made the story and the ethical questions asked about "sleep donation" a bit more personal, which gave it intimacy I think really worked for this story. I did feel that the book ended a bit abruptly, and there's one long scene/section that I didn't completely understand the author's aims for, in that the character's behavior just seemed weird and I didn't get it, but otherwise, I liked the story and enjoyed reading it. The Night World was especially interesting and I wouldn't have minded seeing more of it.

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

A waste of a couple of hours

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

Potentially there is an average short story hiding in here but Russell pads it out to an unengaging 140 pages. The problem is the writing, and that's a big problem. The dialogue is painful and lacks any sense of how people speak - ok its science fiction set in a challenging new world, but come on. But its the florid, lengthy and pretentious descriptive passages that grate the most. Never one to let one word suffice, Russell drags her sentences out beyond what is necessary or wise. I couldn't give a toss about the heroine, the experimental subjects or anyone else by about page 20.
Pretentious? How about a 10 word chapter. Or two? Maybe three?
What is the point of the very poor illustrations? Or the "manual" at the end?
The icing on the cake is the worst sex scene I've ever read, amazing given that it clocks in at about 100 words.
Read a paper instead.

Andrew G. Matthews

Edible Prose

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 18, 2016

Verified Purchase

In her previous work, Karen Russell has shown that she has a startlingly unconventional and original imagination; this book is no exception. The storyline is, ironically, dreamlike and compelling. Most strikingly, Karen Russell uses words like no one else. I found myself rereading sentences for the pure pleasure of it. Her prose is almost edible. If you want to be startled, provoked and transported, don't hesitate to buy this book.

katiestabler

Interesting until it stopped being so

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

I liked the idea that insomnia is the worlds new major ailment, it's timely.

I liked the characters build up although they took my a while to visualize.

I was very disappointed with the ending, it left me feeling underwhelmed and like I'd wasted my time

Amazon Customer

Quirky short story.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

Some interesting ideas, but the short length meant a lot went unanswered at the end.
I would still suggest that others read it though.

I love my books

2.5 stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

Very long winded in sections. More could have been said about her moral battle. I recommend reading the sample first.

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