Another excellent one

Fantastic writing! Great story!

After I finished this very complicated story, struggling to figure out the order of events, I found that I had missed this "Author's Note" at the beginning: "The odd numbered chapters in this novel are set mainly in the years 1983-1984. The even numbered chapters are set in the last two weeks of June 1996." That would have been a big help!

Actually I think I did pretty well given that the author thought it necessary to include that note. There was really only one event that I had trouble placing in time. As you've probably gathered, the story is somewhat of a puzzle, although a fun one. It's one of those books that, after finishing, you have the vague feeling you should have read it more carefully. You're thinking, "Why wasn't I paying more attention when that [seemingly inconsequential event] happened?" You'd like to read it again to understand the story better, but it's too long for that.

I wouldn't call it "funny" or "droll" (as one of the cover blurbs states). I did laugh, but overall it's more like "wacky". It has odd characters, strange situations and a sweet, if unusual, love story. And don't ask me exactly what I mean by this, but it's quite "British". On the down side, I think Adam would say there were several incidents described at length that didn't do anything to propel the narrative and at least one minor character the author invented simply to stitch part of the puzzle together.

The House of Sleep reads like a dream--hazy, dripping in moody detail, and reliant upon strange circumstances. Not all of the story works, or makes sense for that matter, but if you go with the dream motif, reading this novel is like an interesting dream you don't fully comprehend, but you enjoyed.

The book was about a group of students sharing a university dorm and returning after many years to the same town. The dorm has been converted to a clinic for people who have trouble with sleep. Some previous students return as patients, others as doctors. Some have stayed behond for other reasons. I found the plot confusing and the time jumps difficult to follow. Many times I couldn't tell if the plot was happening in the past or in the present. There were also a few too many coincidences needed to bring the former students back together. And finally, as a lab scientist myself, I am so tired of "the crazy scientist" stereotype character. It was all there: no social skills, secret experiments in the basement, ruthless mistreating of experimental animals and subjects, this has all been seen before and it is inaccurate and unoriginal.

First and for most you have to know something about this book. It contains horrific animal cruelty.

And I mean absolutely horrific. If I had known this I would not have picked the book up. I certainly couldn’t read it after a few sentences . It made me feel sick and very upset. I have an incredibly low tolerance for animal cruelty and I couldn’t bear it.

It’s a good book but that override everything and was too much for me.

I remember reading another one of his that also had extreme animal cruelty that to this day I can’t get out of my head. It really upset me and although the book was 5 stars I wish I hadn’t read it. I feel the same way about this book. Sometimes I need to shield myself from horrible things and although it’s a fascinating book. Those few pages are something I wish I hadn’t read because I’m not capable of dealing with them.

it definitely needs a trigger warning

One of the redeeming sections is the article with the incorrect footnotes. That is a great bit of fun writing and almost completely at odds with the rest of the book, to the point where it works.

However. All I could think was, you know what’s going on right now and not a part of you feels like you need to put a stop to it. Your quite happy to let the ‘experiment’ go on and not give it a second thought?

It was too much for me, and I don’t think it was necessary to the story at all. I’m actually fairly angry about it. I’ll end up with nightmares over something that wasn’t required for the plot. Without that I’d have given it 3 stars but I can only give it 2 because it’s going to stay with me for all the wrong reasons.

Yes, it's clever, often funny, and even touching--but I can't help feeling that The House of Sleep is just a tiny bit too much of each of these things. It's also the second book I've read in a row where I feel loath to discourse upon it in print because it would be something of a disservice to a prospective reader. Best to jump into this one with no expectations and let it take you where it will without having any signposts. Yes, it's worth it (4 stars for me means a good book, 5 is great and 3 just average).

The novel goes fast and the overall architecture is quite good, but also rather an obvious literary edifice. Still, that goes with the rest of the narrative, as we're in a world just a little too artistically articulated to be quite real--too many coincidences and too much obvious meaning in everything that happens. Should Coe have gone further? (more postmodern or more magical in his magic realism?) Or should he have domesticated this more towards a believably realistic narrative? I'm not sure. For him we must assume that this is the perfect balance he wanted to achieve between the real and the artificial in this particular narrative and that's admirable in an author. He stuck to his vision. Like all works of art, then, it's up to your taste as a reader, really, to allow yourself to enjoy the book's obvious artifice or to find it annoyingly ordered and improbable. I rushed right through with a minimum of pain--but I was never 100% convinced of the novel's stab at genius. Looking forward to Coe's impending visit to Florence and to reading more of his novels though. In the end it was more intriguing to me than anything else.