The Little Sleep and No Sleep Til Wonderland Omnibus by Paul Tremblay
I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – Out Now
Price – £8.99 paperback £4.74 Kindle eBook
This omnibus brings Paul Tremblay’s debut novels - classic noirs, The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland – back in to print for the first time in over 10 years. Darkly comedic and carrying all the hallmarks of Tremblay’s later work, they introduce Mark Genevich, a narcoleptic detective operating out of his mom’s apartment in South Boston.
In THE LITTLE SLEEP, Genevich is hired to identify the girl in a couple of photos – except the girl looks a lot like the reality TV star and DA’s daughter, and he can’t remember who gave him the job because he was asleep at the time. Wrangling deception, intrigue, cataleptic hallucinations and a body that could fall asleep at any moment Genevich follows the trail that leads him into his own family history, and his memories of his dear departed father.
NO SLEEP TILL WONDERLAND sees Genevich dropping out, forced into group therapy by his landlord mother or face eviction. His new friend, Gus, finds out he’s a PI and asks him to help find a local suit’s lover. But soon Genevich is pulled into events over his head – rescuing a child from a burning house, maybe?; drug deals with a local bouncer and dealer; possibly getting a girlfriend. But solving mysteries is what Genevich does, starting with the mystery of what happened to him whilst he was asleep…
Genre is a artificial structure we love to give stories to help us link stories to other stories. Have a murder to solve you may yourself in crime, aliens enter your chapter you’re in SF but please don’t ask if Aliens is a horror move despite it being set in space. I think it is a very wide field and any attempt to limit what you can do in one should be fought. It is like taking a familiar song and really really re-working it like a jazz or blues tune. How much can you make it your own and when do you need to stop before it gets unworkable. In The Little Sleep and NO Sleep Til Wonderland omnibus by Paul Tremblay a fascinating idea gets played in two novels taking noir and pushing into a David Lynch style trip through crime.
Mark Genevich had a terrible car accident that didn’t just give him severe facial injuries he hides behind his beard but narcolepsy. From little sleeps to big sleep and paralysis each day leads to a strange ever tired trip through life he occupies with chainsmoking. He has become a private detective usually reliant on online only investigations but gets startled when minor reality TV star Jennifer Times asks him to find some photos that appear to be of her in comprising positions, he gets into a weird trip that involves Jennifer’s father a powerful DA, his deceased father and a TV star that denies now all knowledge of talking to him. Can Mark trust himself?
A narcoleptic detective sounds like a comedy sketch but Tremblay makes this work by making Mark’s voice quite compelling. IN some ways the traditional noir wisecracking detective that we know and love in thriller but adds a lot of vulnerability which is refreshing; Mark is readily suspecting he is out of his depth, scared and thinks his behaviour will end relationships with his suffering mother and very few remaining friends. He is likeable and more underdog than confident white knight.
The other hook to the tales is more modern and that is Tremblay adds in the unusual aspects of narcolepsy that mean Mark gets very real dreams and that sometimes what he sees is not what anyone else sees. This moves the story into unreliable narrator territory so very quickly we as readers have to carefully study scenes and are they real or a sub-concious that is putting a noir style This has pluses and minuses. For the first tale it’s refreshing and gives the story an edge as we try to work out what is going on and it takes noir on occasion into strange horror territory as the reality we have when reading can’t be trusted. The first story takes a standard noir plot and it’s the delivery that really works although you may find you can guess the suspect and the crime very quickly. The second tale tough for me shows the limitations of the character and soon you’re questioning if anything you are told is real – there isn’t quite enough to make the formula last long. I did how like that eventually Tremblay even makes you take a second look at Mark himself which adds a further level of reality to be questioned.
They’re a bold duo and I really like the early glimpses of a writer we know now more for horror and you can see glimpses of his later work in the tale – reality, how story can be played with etc that make it an entertaining read but I do think after two novels I’d seen enough. Perhaps more a curate’s egg but a great example of how you can play with a format and do something familiar but very different.
