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A carregar... Sleep Donation (2014)por Karen Russell
A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. This was a quickie, a dystopian novella about a global insomnia epidemic, with a hefty dose of medical (and other) ethics. It kept me right up until the end, when it didn’t quite stick the landing… but it was fun going, anyway. Russell’s style is so, so tight, but—especially in a shorter work—it still does it for me. I found this one interesting primarily for Russell's pre-pandemic take on the public's reaction to a novel illness and the ethical issues surrounding finding a cure/treatment. There's also a bit of an exploration of where one finds a moral compass in a world (or at least a culture) with maleable morality. What are the rules if there are no rules? Kind of bleak. This is a fast, fascinating read, and the Viking paperback I have has the most gorgeous illustrations which are themselves well worth sinking into. The concepts, ideas, and images here sucked me in almost immediately, and in the end, I read the book in only a few sittings. And... yet. And yet, I have to admit that I ended up wanting more. More from the characters, more from the plot, and more especially from the ending. In some ways, it felt like 90% of the book's energy went to world-building and imagery, leaving only 10% or so of the energy to go toward plot and character. In some ways, it may be that the world-building and concept were so vibrant that they were more than enough to hold up the experience of the book, so all else was deemed secondary, but especially by the time the book ended, I found myself simply wanting more. So, would I recommend the book? Well, yes, but with some reservations, and with the caveat that this is a book to be read for the concepts and the world and the images playing it forward, vs for the primary story or any sort of conflict. I'm not sure if I'll read more of Russell's work, truly--if the sound of a story fascinates me, I probably will. If not... I probably won't. awful but awesome because this is such nightmare fuel for me: AN INABILITY TO SLEEP EVER AGAIN. but I enjoyed this more than I expected, much to my surprise; Karen Russell's particular weirdness doesn't always work for me? but the writing was good and no one was sexually assaulted!! otoh, some naive childlike adults. I never win. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
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"For the first time in paperback, a haunting novella from the uncannily imaginative author of the national bestsellers Swamplandia! and Orange World: the story of a deadly insomnia epidemic and the lengths one woman will go to to fight it. Trish Edgewater is the Slumber Corps' top recruiter. On the phone, at a specially organized Sleep Drive, even in a supermarket parking lot: Trish can get even the most reluctant healthy dreamer to donate sleep to an insomniac in crisis--one of hundreds of thousands of people who have totally lost the ability to sleep. Trish cries, she shakes, she shows potential donors a picture of her deceased sister, Dori: one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia plague that has swept the globe. Run by the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers, the Slumber Corps is at the forefront of the fight against this deadly new disease. But when Trish is confronted by "Baby A," the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious "Donor Y," whose horrific infectious nightmares are threatening to sweep through the precious sleep supply, her faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter. Fully illustrated with dreamy evocations of Russell's singular imagination and featuring a brand-new "Nightmare Appendix," Sleep Donation will keep readers up long into the night and long after haunt their dreams"-- Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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Which makes this sound like an interesting but fairly straightforward sort of science fiction story. It's not. It's odd, hard to get a handle on, and, perhaps fittingly, rather dreamlike. Aspects of it feel deeply realistic, and others fantastic or almost mystical. The writing is a bit strange, too, giving the impression that the writer was happy to just throw all kinds of weird descriptions and metaphors at everything to see what stuck, with some results that are breathtakingly perfect and others that are borderline nonsensical. In a different sort of work, I might criticize that. In this one... maybe it works.
Thematically, it feels like it could, perhaps even should, be saying something simple and clear, but the more I try to draw one-to-one comparisons with obviously relevant real-life scenarios, the more I find my brain slipping around and getting lost in complexity and metaphor. Whatever I might make of it, I will say that it resonates strongly with issues about disease and treatment, capitalism and exploitation, generosity and greed, privacy and intimacy. ( )