Review: The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay
Mark Genevich is a private investigator in South Boston. He’s just gotten another case, or he thinks he has a case…he’s not sure actually. You see, Genevich is a narcoleptic as a result of the car accident that killed his best friend and rearranged his face. As far as he can remember, Jennifer Times walked into his office — refused to take no for an answer — and hired him to find her fingers. The problem is that while she was there Genevich had actually fallen into a hypnogogic state and when he awoke he was alone, there was no check, but there were some cryptic notes on his pad and a manila envelope with two black and white photos of a young girl that looked a lot like Jennifer.
Genevich tends not to take jobs that require him to leave his office. He never knows when he’ll drop into sleep or worse, cataplexy, when he’s awake and aware but can’t move. The little sleeps or hypnogogic states are similar to what happens to most of us with a high fever and tiredness. We fall asleep on the couch with the DVD player or TV on and whatever is playing gets incorporated into our dreams along with whatever our brain’s unconscious serves up. Awoken we don’t know at first what was dream and what reality. For Mark Genevich most of his life is like that. Part of any investigation he does involves figuring out what exactly is the job and what he’s supposed to do, which is why he prefers email, written instructions, and internet searches.
His first step is to figure out what the real job is since he couldn’t have possibly been hired to search for her fingers. It must have something to do with the pictures. However, contacting Jennifer reveals that she doesn’t know who he is or what he’s talking about. So, now it’s necessary to step back and figure out who hired him and why?
The entire story is told from Mark Genevich’s point of view, which means most of the information is disjointed and we, as readers, don’t know anymore than he does. Some authors hide information in mysteries by keeping us out of the detectives head but Tremblay lets us into Genevich’s head because it doesn’t matter what he knows because we don’t know if what he knows is real or dream or a combination of the two.
A gritty, noir mystery with a very different private investigator, Tremblay manages to tell a story that keeps the reader engaged from the first page. It’s not just can you figure it out before the sleuth, but will he figure it out because you both have the same confusing information and little to guide you.
I haven’t read anything this different in a while and it was not only interesting as a mystery, but contained a lot of information about a neurological problem that doesn’t get dealt with much in any fiction. Tremblay does a great job bringing Mark Genevich to life. He may not be someone you like very much, but you will respect his determination.
Since the entire novel is told form Mark Genevich’s point of view, the reader is left as much in the dark as Mark, we can’t know more than he does about anything. The reader and Genevich must decide what memories are are of real events and which are a result of hypnogogic hallucinations. Kept off balance throughout, Genevich is fighting a battle to control his neurological symptoms, retain his memories as well as shift through them to figure out which are real and which are a result of his little sleeps, and solve a crime.
Gritty, noir at its best, The Little Sleep manages to allow the reader to be an active participant in the case as there’s little chance the reader will spot clues before the PI since the reader also has to figure out what to believe. Imaginative and entertaining, it’s a story you just can’t put down.