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Nod

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Description

Adrian Barnes has successfully delivered a very simple dystopian story here; a nation in the throes of panic, frenzy, poverty, collapse and psychosis. There is so much going on under our world of words and societal constructs, but we accept the surface as it is presented to us. As the title refers to the land of Nod, the novel takes a look at the after effects of a global event which makes people unable to sleep. Paul is not the most sociable person; he likes his own company as being an author makes it easier for him to keep out of harm's way.

It was a strange novel to read alongside the other novel I was finishing this week, HOW TO STOP TIME, which also is interested in the greater movements of human through culture. He's a thoroughly irritating character, who pretty much hates almost everyone else and doesn't socialise, instead writing books on language that he admits very few people would want to read. This is certainly a book of unanswered questions, and most frustratingly of all, the protagonist, Paul, doesn't seem interested in what any of the answers are. I talked to Barnes about the medical understanding of chronic sleeplessness, the world inside dreams, and how his cancer taught him that insomnia’s actually not the end of the world.But underneath lies a much richer, and cleverer, narrative where Paul, a self-confessed misanthrope, becomes a reluctant messianic saint, willing to sacrifice his own life to save others. A main villain soon emerged, but I found the person ridiculous, the motives of that person unclear, and the whole point of the novel shrouded in a dull fug. Yet the most endearing element comes from the death of a long term relationship between Paul (one of the few Sleepers - people who are able to maintain nightly sleep) and his is partner Tanya (one of the many Awakened, those in a perpetual state of insomnia). Paul is a misanthropic hack writing a non-fiction book about obscure words when the world is afflicted and the majority of citizens begin to hallucinate solipsistic realities that Paul, as a Sleeper and a wordsmith, can influence. Bambini che erediteranno la Terra, ma dei quali non ci è dato sapere il destino, perché l'autore non assume mai il ruolo di narratore onniscente ed è narratore solo finché esiste.

By the time she died (the protagonist slit her throat with a box cutter to Save Her From What The World Had Become and What Was Happening to Her), I'd stopped giving a damn. Paul is an etymologist – his life revolves around the exploration of words and their origins, and writing books about their history and transformation.Ci sono poi i bambini che dormono ancora, una piccola comunità apparentemente separata e insensibile davanti alla situazione in cui versano gli adulti.

The premise of the book lured me in : people say that after a few days without sleep, psychological issues start to kick in, so what happens when no one can sleep in the whole wide world ? Imagine that it’s not that you don’t need sleep—you do need sleep, you desperately do—and you long for sleep more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life. Another strong point of Nod are that most of the secondary characters are more than just cardboard cut outs who behave according to the clichés of the genre.There is a lot to recommend this book, not least a concept which, on the surface, is fascinating - the deterioration of humanity when the majority of the population cannot sleep. I'm warning you that you might not like it because it is more literary than most fantasy you're likely to pick up. There were parts of the narrative which were really engaging, particularly witnessing the demise of the protagonist's relationship with his partner, but I found the general thread of the story confusing and convoluted.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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