Sleeping Beauties is a gigantic, door-stopping tome that tells the story of a world without women. What would happen if suddenly all of the world’s women were suddenly asleep, and the men were left to their own devices, without supervision and guidance from the fairer sex? How long until guns are used to make every single decision?
As it turns out, less than a week.
Uncle Stevie and his son Owen are trying something interesting here, but it mostly didn’t work for me. Here’s what I loved:
- As usual, the first third of the book is just an introduction to the characters and the town where this bizarre story takes place — a small Appalachian town in West Virginia called Dooling. We see the handsome pool guy cleaning out pools and giving garden advice. We sit with some high school kids arguing about whether or not they should go to the Arcade Fire show. We are introduced to some strung out folks doing meth in a trailer (with their very own meth lab in the shed outside!). We peek in on the lives of the women who are incarcerated at the women’s prison just outside of town. And we meet Sheriff Lila Norcross and her husband, Dr. Clint Norcross (who just happens to be the psychiatrist up at the prison). There’s nobody out there that does this kind of writing better than King. He doesn’t just introduce names and characteristics — by the end of the first section of the story, you really feel like you know these people and the town that they live in.
- I also enjoyed the general mystery of the story: a sleeping sickness called Aurora suddenly sweeps across the globe. As women fall asleep, they immediately become wrapped in cocoons of unknown origin. Some women fight it for as long as they can, using drugs and exercise to keep from falling asleep, but some women gladly welcome this mysterious slumber as a way to escape their day-to-day lives. If anyone attempts to cut the cocoon off of a sleeping woman, they are met with immediate and gruesome violence. These “sleeping beauties” just want to go back to sleep. DO NOT DISTURB. But what happens to them when they fall asleep? Will they ever wake up?
- I liked seeing some of the characters redeem themselves. A meth addled plastic surgeon becomes one of the story’s most trusted voices of reason. A crazy (really. much too crazy.) prison inmate becomes a brave defender of womenkind. A woman so addicted to drugs that she prostitutes herself turns into a wise, horse loving, leader of women.
- I loved that he wrote this with his son. I read Owen King’s book Double Feature a few years ago, and I didn’t love it. But like the books that King wrote with Peter Straub, the story was told smoothly and seamlessly. It was impossible to tell who wrote what.
Sadly, I think there was more that I didn’t really like.
- Most of the male characters were horrible and unredeemable. They had issues with women in positions of power. They had anger problems. They beat their partners. They sexually abused the inmates. They drank too much. They solved all of their problems with weapons.
- I don’t really want to get into a feminist rant here (I’d rather just talk about the book, not the social issues of the world), but the whole basic plot is somewhat problematic (WOMEN ARE ALL THAT IS GOOD. MEN ARE BAD AND LIKE GUNS.) in that it was written by two men. Yes, these two men in particular have some wonderful, strong women in their lives. But come on.
- There was a young girl in this book named Nana. I cannot accept this as a name. I apologize if you or a loved one is named Nana. Unless its your grandmother. That’s fine.
- I know that King LOVES to kill off your favorite characters Joss Whedon-style, but I hated when and how SPOILER Garth Flickinger died. He was quickly becoming one of my favorite King characters of all time.
- While I sort of liked the fact that the women of Dooling (I GUESS THIS IS A SPOILER?) had been transported to a mystical Dooling of another world to re-start society, I really, really, really didn’t like the character of Eve Black, who apparently brought Aurora with her when she came to our world. She was too magical, too quirky, too beautiful. Ugh. (But I did like that she was supposedly the inspiration for Shakespeare to write the Queen Mab speech in Romeo & Juliet. Anything that gives me the opportunity to post this:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ09HcvYQTY&w=560&h=315]
- Lastly, I get that Uncle Stevie has a lot of power in the publishing world. But this book could easily have been 200 pages shorter. Cut the entire plot about the moronic drug dealers with the rocket launcher and the arm wrestling guard, don’t describe every single inmate in the prison, and we would be good to go.
And yes, in case you were wondering, this book suffers from Stephen King ending syndrome. And yet still. I’ll give it 3 stars.
I haven’t read it yet (still waiting on hold list) but do you think the all men being bad thing is supposed to be a condemnation, maybe not of men themselves, but of (sigh) toxic masculinity? I confess I do find it interesting that two men are taking on their own gender this way, but the reviews I’ve seen so far have been mediocre.
Yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. I think they are trying to make a point about the state of our society and toxic masculinity and learned behavior, etc.
The bad men have to learn how to be better! The good men might not always get what they want from women! Just because you love her and treat her right doesn’t mean she owes you anything!
I don’t know. The book is filled with jabs at Trump and other commentary about the current state of affairs. I just didn’t want to deal with it…I just wanted to read a story.
Maybe we just aren’t the right audience? Hmm. I guess I’ll find out what I think for sure in a couple of months.
And by right audience, I mean, we already know this stuff.
But I’m a Constant Reader! If I’m not the audience, then who is?
I think it’s more just a swing and a miss for the King boys. I appreciate the effort, but I’m all set, say thank ya.
I’m skeptical of both Joe and Owen. I LOVED Locke & Key, but all the novels I’ve read from JH have just been meh for me. The Fireman was such an exercise in disappointment. They don’t seem to have inherited their father’s magic touch, for me at least.
I didn’t care for Owen’s book a few years ago and I think the main reason why is because he isn’t his dad. He wrote a novel. Not a scary book or a book about a creepy town in Maine. Just a novel. And I held it against him.
Hill, on the other hand, has been up and down for me. Have you read 20th Century Ghosts? Some of those stories are excellent (and, ok, some stink).
I just finished it this morning. There were other aspects I found problematic: The fate of all womankind rests on the decision of only the women of Dooling. Women from America—where, yes, we face the daily and very real implications of sexism and misogyny, but NOTHING on the level that women in some sections of the world experience. Are we to believe that the women in areas where they are not allowed to learn to read or drive or work outside the home or who are married off when they’re still children would have voted the same way? Why are their voices silenced? Why do Americans always get to be the ones who speak for the whole world?
I also didn’t buy the characters of Dooling as the average Appalachian Americans. I listened to this book on audiotape and there was a discussion at the end with Stephen and Owen and they were talking about how they set the book in Appalachia because so many of the major American conflicts taking place currently center on that area of the country. Yet—other than the meth heads and some of the prisoners (who were not locals), did any of the characters in that book seem affected by poverty? Opioid addiction? A lack of prospects and means to pursue other prospects? Did any of the characters in this “coal town” seem affected by the loss of coal production in the region? Did any of them seem to be tied to coal mining ancestors? They had their own supermarket, which is more than most hard-hit Appalachian towns can boast, as many of them are food deserts. There was a plastic surgeon living in Appalachia driving a Mercedes? A man moved with his family to that town expecting to open a lucrative private counseling practice? A town in central Appalachia elected a non-local female sheriff? The book makes several jibes at the President, who is either named as Trump or it’s implied (I can’t remember) and the only characters who comment on him do so with disdain. Appalachia was a region that Trump won by a landslide, yet I can’t remember hearing a single character express the views that you commonly hear of his supporters.
I also agree this book was too long. I think the lengthy prison siege could have been much shorter, too. That whole part was clearly written with a TV show (which the Kings started this project as—a show) or movie in mind. Multi-chapter “action” scenes where shit keeps blowing up and people keep shooting each other bore me to death. But I might be in the minority in that opinion, I dunno.
Last, I didn’t understand the point of the fox. He was given all this page time and this sense of mystique, but I don’t know what he actually did or why he was necessary.
You make many excellexcellent points.
I wholeheartedly agree with your comments about Dooling being the crux point for all of womanhood, and Clint being responsible for all of manhood. We never saw the fallout from all of the men who had burned hoards of women alive in their cocoons outside of Dooling. What were the repercussions — both nationally and internationally?
Interesting that this was conceived as a show. Now a lot of the extended action sequences make a bit more sense. Not a whole ton of sense, mind you, but a bit.
And thanks for mentioning the fox. I think that was a major wasted opportunity for some interesting story telling…but instead it just fizzled out.