As it starts out you could be mistaken for believing you're going to get a high octane end-of-the-world novel with zombie analogues. No explanation is offered, and all that is just used as setup for that tired old Humans are the Real Monsters tripe that's been done to death by this point.

We're introduced to the idea that after a certain number of days, psychosis will set in for all those who cannot sleep, and they will eventually die, and the diary format kept this in the forefront of my mind throughout. It's also wonderfully apt considering the state of the world at present, a little look behind the curtain at what might await us should we lose control. The writing is sublime in places, funny in its social observations, and yet strong enough to stand up to many other literary books that frowned upon this type of genre.A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same mysterious dream. No logical reason is given for why they decide to do this, but this kid that they don't even know and who never says a word suddenly becomes VERY important to them. I think I’d certainly have preferred it if the second half of the book had been sacrificed for exploring the reasons why all of this was happening.

A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand can still sleep, and they've all shared the same strange, golden dream. His style was a breath of fresh air after some of the self-published rubbish available on Kindle these days.Again, being only three chapters in, I don’t know if this is a recurring theme of the book where Paul gets something from popular culture so glaringly wrong that we can witness the depth of his own detachment from society as a whole. Strange cults pop up, children are acting oddly, and everyone starts going on about Paul's book he is currently writing, Nod (yep, the same title as the book). Taking a post-millennial jab at the zombie apocalypse trope, Adrian Barnes first novel ‘Nod’ pitches us into a world of the terminally sleep-deprived. The world takes on a very fantasmagorical aspect because of the psychosis brought by sleep deprivation or from the dreams the few who still sleep have.

The first few days very clearly outlined what was happening for Paul, who could sleep, and his partner Tanya, who could not, and the bar was set for absolute mayhem and trauma to come. Please bear in mind that this is my own point of view, and maybe other readers may find themselves enjoying Nod. NOD is about what happens to the world, when for some unknown reason the vast majority of the worlds population can now, suddenly, no longer sleep. So in summary this is a really good book, that get's you thinking long after you have put it down, but be warned.The world is thrown into chaos when 99% of the world's population spontaneously becomes incapable of sleep, and are forced to steadily succumb to sleep deprivation psychosis.

The modes of madness and destruction into which the various people in the story eventually fell seemed to occur more because they were narratively helpful than because they were a logical consequence of the story's premise. Mind, that also means three very minor but grating irritations; three entirely unnecessary distractions from the unfolding drama that could’ve been avoided. Adrian Barnes has successfully delivered a very simple dystopian story here; a nation in the throes of panic, frenzy, poverty, collapse and psychosis. 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. Paul is finally calm, and the narrative cuts off halfway through a sentence, indicating that he has fallen asleep for good.Maybe if some attempt had been made to flesh her out before her pointless death-- aside from the offhand mention that her uncle had abused her as a child, which is brought up exactly once and promptly forgotten-- then maybe I would have cared for her as a character. You can’t make yourself do it; the harder you try, the less likely you’ll be able to tumble into slumber. Gravity always works the same and, even if you intend to “science the sh*t” out of a problem, you need to ensure that the science is accurate. Reality is distorted as the conceptual fiction of the world of Nod turns fact in the eyes of the Awakened. The author didn't know that a year after writing these things his life would take a turn that would throw those issues into such sharp focus.