Winner of the Writers' Guild Best Fiction Award in England and the Prix
Medicis in France
Like a surreal and highly caffeinated version of The Big Chill,
Jonathan Coe's novel follows four students who knew each other in
college in the eighties. Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid
she mistakes them for real events. Robert has his life changed forever
by the misunderstandings that arise from her condition. Terry spends his
wakeful nights fueling his obsession with movies. And an increasingly
unstable doctor, Gregory, sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which
he must eradicate.
But after ten years of fretful slumber and dreams gone bad, the four
reunite in their college town to confront their disorders. In a Gothic
cliffside manor being used as a clinic for sleep disorders, they
discover that neither love, nor lunacy, nor obsession ever rests.