After a mysterious, silent child is found abandoned on the beach clutching a handheld video game, residents and tourists alike find themselves utterly unable to sleep. Exhaustion impairs judgment, delusions become hysteria, and mob rule explodes into shocking violence. Told from three perspectives: Chief of Police Mays tries to keep order, teenaged tourist Cort and her friends compete in a … dangerous social media contest for the most hours awake, while local physician and former Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Sam Carlson battles his guilt over a student’s suicide and the blurriness of his own insomnia, to try to treat the sleepless—until he and the child must flee the violent mob that blames the child for the epidemic.
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Deprivation a new novel by Roy Frierich, describes an insomnia outbreak that occurs over the course of nine days on a small fictional island off the Atlantic coast. A trauma-stricken boy is found wandering the beach of Carratuck Island, where tourists and locals are busy starting their usual summer vacation rituals. Sam is the doctor in charge of the Urgent Care Center, and his typical caseload involves simple accidents and sun-related maladies. This perfectly suits the young physician who wishes to escape a past that includes the mysterious death of a patient in his care while he was still a practicing Psychiatrist. Most of his days are now spent on his boat, enjoying the temporary company of a local waitress and biking around greeting his fellow islanders. When the “Boy” is brought in, Sam enlists the Chief of Police to locate the parents so the child can be released from his care. Filthy, mute and obviously terrorized, the boy grips his hand-held game and gives no clues as to what has happened to reduce him to this state. The book introduces another storyline centering around Cort, the vacationing teen who was supposed to be employed as the boy’s babysitter. Instead, she has been spending her time hooking up with a local surfer, partying with friends and participating in a new social media game that involves pulling all-nighters. The Chief is a third main character, a man who feels solely responsible for keeping the peace but only on his own terms with minimal interference. Sam starts to notice that the people coming to his clinic are all suddenly complaining of the same malady- complete sleeplessness. As the situation continues unabated and some disturbing behavior emerges, Sam reaches out to the mainland for assistance. Is the insomnia due to a contagion of the viral, environmental variety or could it be caused by a mass-hysteria? Sam and the Chief struggle with their own physical limitations resulting from lack of rest as the island begins to devolve into chaos. Carratuck becomes a pressure-cooker of irrational beliefs and desperate acts, exposing the basic animal nature brought about when self-preservation becomes paramount. Freirich’s prose is a bit too elaborate and his phrasing and word choice are often repetitive—which can be distracting and irritating at times. Still, Deprivation does provide a unique perspective on how people react when unable to meet their basic needs and the resulting contagion of fear and paranoia. It is a timely book, published during a real pandemic that tests our own ability to cope with uncertainty and tested solidarity.
Thanks to the author, Meerkat Press and LibraryThing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
Such a great premise: a whole island of sleep deprived characters and a mysterious lost child. Roy Freirich took the story beyond a clever idea and really explored human nature and crowd mentality. As everyone becomes more and more exhausted, it becomes a struggle for the police chief and the doctor to hold their thoughts together long enough to figure out what’s really happening. I had to binge read the second half of this book, not wanting to put it down until the last page. It is beautifully written in a visual style and I highly recommend it.
This was an odd book – disconcerting and eerie, with a constant edgy feeling that you were waiting for The Big Reveal, and then when it finally came, it felt more than a little anti-climactic… It shouldn’t have – the suspense felt nail-bitingly real and the gritty sand-in-your-eyes feeling of being so far beyond over-tired was marvelously depicted, but somehow this one never felt quite like it figured out what book it wanted to be. Was it horror? Was it supernatural? Was it about man’s inhumanity? Was it about family – those we make and those we choose? It was an odd but well-crafted read, if that makes any sense, and in the end I think it was about a lot of those things – and maybe that’s the issue…
It reminded me of Insomnia (the 2002 movie with Robin Williams and Al Pacino) in its ability to actually make you feel the mind-altering, hallucinogenic, zombie-state of over-the-edge sleeplessness. The stories feel blurry and off, which suits them perfectly, but leaves an unfinished, meandering, off-putting taste in your mouth while reading. It works on that level beautifully – the evocative gut-feeling was definitely there in this one – but left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied narrative-wise. It started with a deliciously slow build – but then stayed that slow for what felt like forever. Again, it works conceptually, but makes for a bit of a slog as a readable story. Then when things finally came to a head they felt rushed and hurried along, like we went from a coma to a fever dream in the snap of fingers. It was jarring and felt just a little off, hence the three stars.
I can’t say I liked it, per se – but I never even considered not finishing it, which says a lot more than three stars implies. Give it a go for yourself – Freirich is great at evoking a mood, and despite my back-and-forth review, I’m intrigued enough by that to give him another go in the future…
Thanks to the publisher, Meerkat Press, for my obligation-free review copy.