SLEEP by Nino Ricci (Doubleday), 235 pages, $30 cloth. Rating: NNN
There’s a whiff of inevitability in Nino Ricci’s harrowing novel Sleep, but you can’t help but appreciate the way he takes you to the finish line.
Roman history prof David, once an academic superstar, is a narcoleptic his brain cannot regulate his sleep cycles, resulting in sudden lapses into sleep during the day. The book opens with David conking out at the wheel of his car, with his son as a passenger. He hasn’t told his wife, Julie, about his physical difficulties, one of many secrets in a marriage rapidly turning loveless that collapses within the book’s first third.
He was always an inveterate skirt-chaser, and it finally gets him into deep trouble. When he hits rock bottom and an old friend hires him at a small U.S. college, within days David has his eye on his colleague’s wife. And he’s still haunted by a decade-old plagiarism scandal.
He survives, sort of, thanks to a drug cocktail of Viagra, meth and Prozac. In fact, the header for each chapter refers to whatever drug is influencing him most or whatever gun he’s obsessed with at the time.
Reading about David’s delusions and self-destructive behaviour is a lot like watching an accident about to happen – in slow motion. As he’s prepping for the next seduction or carving out lines to snort with the TAs, you can’t help but wonder, “Oh god, how many bad choices can this guy make?”
But Ricci is such a good writer that, as the narrative hurtles to its inexorable conclusion, he makes believable every bit of David’s twisted logic, all his sick excuses and the convoluted world view he devises to keep himself going. And his descriptions of the run-ups to David’s blackouts are hauntingly convincing.
But beware. This book is grim.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
