BEST BOOKS ON... SLEEP
EVERYONE I know is obsessed by sleep and how much they’re getting of it. On holiday last week, several couples agreed that rest — who is getting it, where and how — was a tension point in their relationships.
There were insomniacs yoked to snorers and larks to owls. I was accused of making ‘ napjudgements’. And it is true — it drives me insane that my husband seizes any opportunity to steal a moment’s shut-eye. He is an any time, anywhere, any place sleeper, while I am a wracked one.
Our snooze-anxiety may reflect that many of us had children in our mid to late 30s, even 40s — and have never quite recovered from the sanity-sapping shock of a newborn’s intermittent slumber.
I have friends who have read books on sleep hygiene, then invested in specialist paraphernalia like back pillows, eye masks, earplugs and lavender sprays. Others have monitored restless nights using apps. I even know someone who underwent observation in a sleep clinic.
Ottessa Moshfegh’s bleakly satirical, My Year Of Rest And Relaxation skewers a lot of our modern obsessiveness with sleep. It is narrated by a young female New Yorker who has decided to hibernate. ‘I just wanted to sleep all the time. I had a plan.’
‘I’m not a junkie or something,’ she insists, despite the prescription downers fuelling her downtime.
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker imagines a sleeping epidemic engulfing a Californian town. One day, a student comes in late from partying, then fails to awaken.
Soon, others fall into a coma, where their minds are in a dream state but their bodies inanimate. The town is cordoned off.
Bed by David Whitehouse retells the story of Mal, who has refused to leave his bed for 20 years. Morbidly overweight, he sleeps on two kingsized beds trussed to a single one. His brother, who narrates his story, sadly reports: ‘Mal’s death is the only thing that can save this family because his life has destroyed it.’
Better to be like Aunt Ada Doom in Cold Comfort Farm, who having taken to her bed, is persuaded to leave it. Rise and shine: our waking hours are a worthier obsession than those we spend asleep.