Sleepless by Louise Mumford.

 

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You can buy Sleepless.....Here

You can follow Louise Mumford here...Here

The Blurb...

Thea is an insomniac; she hasn’t slept more than three hours a night for years.

So when an ad for a sleep trial that promises to change her life pops up on her phone, Thea knows this is her last chance at finding any kind of normal life.

Soon Thea’s sleeping for longer than she has in a decade, and awakes feeling transformed. So much so that at first she’s willing to overlook the oddities of the trial – the lack of any phone signal; the way she can’t leave her bedroom without permission; the fact that all her personal possessions are locked away, even her shoes.

But it soon becomes clear that the trial doesn’t just want to help Thea sleep. It wants to control her sleep…

My Review...

Thea suffers from insomnia, as a result she is constantly tired, irritable and struggles to pay attention. It is much like permanent jet lag. Being a shift worker myself I can see how sleep deprivation can cause all sorts of issues. 

After being the cause of a minor road accident, Thea resolves to do something about her insomnia and signs up to a medical trial on a remote island (based on Caldey Island?) much to the chagrin of her post menopausal, activist mother (played in my head by Fiona Shaw of Baptiste 2🤷‍♂️) Thea's mother is a wonderful character who wears vagina print scarves!  

The trial starts well and Thea begins to get a little more sleep and even begin to make friends. However,  after a short trip on the island to the old monastery, Thea begins to smell a rat and with a few companions begins to investigate.

Sleepless is an enjoyable British, science gone wrong, horror thriller. It put me in mind of an up to date John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids, The Midwhich Cuckoos etc) with a touch of Soylent Green thrown in.

The author describes the curse of insomnia particularly well and it is no surprise that in the notes at the end of the book she confesses that she is a victim of the dreaded insomnia. 

I was amazed to see that this is a debut novel. The narrative is polished and slick, you would swear that the author is a veteran of long-standing. It augers well for a long career in fiction writing.

As with all the best dystopian tales there is a scary nugget of truth in the story that could possibly evolve one day into actually becoming reality. This book would make a great episode of Black Mirror or a Netflix binge watch box set. Now to try to get some kip😳🛌😴!

Selected Quotes...

"It was her small safe space where she could crawl and hide after an exhausting day spent trying to seem human."

"Her eyes felt as if they’d been put in the oven for too long."

"Harriet led her to a cathedral. This cathedral, like every cathedral before it, was built to stun the masses into greater belief."

"But that was beta- testing for you. Unpredictable. Thankfully, it was frighteningly easy for people to be wiped away– if you chose the right people in the first place. But still… messy."

"She was just one more body for a company that wanted to erase what happened here, forget it, smooth it over like a plasterer smoothing over a wall, hoping the blood wouldn’t seep through."

About the Author...

Louise was born and lives in South Wales. From a young age she loved books and dancing, but hated having to go to sleep, convinced that she might miss out on something interesting happening in the world whilst she dozed – much to her mother’s frustration! Insomnia has been a part of her life ever since.

She studied English Literature at university and graduated with first class honours. As a teacher she tried to pass on her love of reading to her students (and discovered that the secret to successful teaching is… stickers! She is aware that that is, essentially, bribery.)

In the summer of 2019 Louise experienced a once-in-a-lifetime moment: she was discovered as a new writer by her publisher at the Primadonna Festival. Everything has been a bit of a whirlwind since then.

Louise lives in Cardiff with her husband and spends her time trying to get down on paper all the marvellous and frightening things that happen in her head.