Editorial Content for Sleepwalk
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Reviewer (text)
What I love most about Dan Chaon is that his writing is impossible to define by any mere genre. His latest novel, SLEEPWALK, is no exception.
Whenever I come across a unique work such as this one, I attempt to give readers an adequate comp so that they can have a good starting point. As I was scrolling through the myriad of blurbs for SLEEPWALK, I could find only one that came close to what I experienced while reading it: FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS…if Hunter S. Thompson’s novel was set in a sort of apocalyptic future that looks like a strip-mined version of our current world if we continue along the path we are currently on. Chaon’s protagonist spends a good deal of the story strung out on LSD-laced mini bottles of Tito’s vodka.
"SLEEPWALK is a wild ride. It’s an unputdownable novel that is never dull and so beautifully written that it is a simple pleasure just to get lost in the prose and a frightening new world that could resemble ours in the future."
The novel opens with Will Bear traveling in his custom-built motor home, passing a joint back and forth with a young Filipino man. Liandro is manacled at the ankles while Will delivers him to a pre-determined location that is given to him from one of the dozens of burner phones he has in his cabin. While on the road, they scan the desolate landscape of what was once the US and through different weather patterns and unsafe fallout from the dark sky above. Once he accomplishes his task, Will continues to roam the highways with his dog, Flip, as his sole companion. He chats occasionally with a band of “friends” who can guide him to food, shelter or repair work, as well as any updates on the deadly world around him.
The year is never given, and all we know of Will is that he is 50 years old, approximately 6’2”, quite stocky with a full beard and a ponytail. We spend a good deal of time in the past with his alcoholic, psychotic mother, who truly messed him up as a boy and set him on his current loner path. Chaon never spends any time describing how the world got the way it is now. We just know that the US that Will crisscrosses constantly has been ravaged by disease, famine and all sorts of natural maladies to the point that life is a pale shade of what it used to look like.
Will’s life will be completely rocked when he receives a call on one of his burners, using one of his many aliases, by a young woman calling herself Cammie. It turns out that back in college, Will had been talked into donating his sperm to make some side cash. Now, over 20 years later, Cammie claims to have traced her lineage back to his donation. As Will determines she knows a little too much about him for this to a complete scam, he continues to speak with her. She eventually lets on that she has been in contact with other recipients of his sperm and that the final tally of his offspring is over 160.
This is too much for Will to handle, so he seeks out Tim Ribbons, who became his legal guardian after his mother was killed in Alaska. Tim convinces Will that Cammie is a con artist and part of a sinister network that he must find, infiltrate and bring down by any means necessary. Oh, did I mention that Will is also a brutal mercenary killer when he needs to be?
SLEEPWALK is a wild ride. It’s an unputdownable novel that is never dull and so beautifully written that it is a simple pleasure just to get lost in the prose and a frightening new world that could resemble ours in the future. Will Bear is a character you cannot help but like. It’s time well spent just to be by his side for a few hours to share in his incredibly unique life.
Teaser
At 50 years old, Will Bear has been living off the grid for over half his life. A good-natured henchman with a complicated and lonely past and a passion for LSD microdosing, he spends his time hopscotching across state lines in his beloved camper van, running sometimes shady, often dangerous errands for a powerful and ruthless operation. Out of the blue, one of Will's many burner phones heralds a call from a 20-year-old woman claiming to be his biological daughter. She’s entrenched in a widespread and nefarious plot involving Will’s employers, and for Will to continue to have any contact with her increasingly fuzzes the line between the people he's working for and the people he’s running from.
Promo
At 50 years old, Will Bear has been living off the grid for over half his life. A good-natured henchman with a complicated and lonely past and a passion for LSD microdosing, he spends his time hopscotching across state lines in his beloved camper van, running sometimes shady, often dangerous errands for a powerful and ruthless operation. Out of the blue, one of Will's many burner phones heralds a call from a 20-year-old woman claiming to be his biological daughter. She’s entrenched in a widespread and nefarious plot involving Will’s employers, and for Will to continue to have any contact with her increasingly fuzzes the line between the people he's working for and the people he’s running from.
About the Book
SLEEPWALK is a high speed and darkly comic road trip through a near future America with a big-hearted mercenary, from beloved and acclaimed award-winning novelist Dan Chaon.
SLEEPWALK'S hero, Will Bear, is a man with so many aliases that he simply thinks of himself as the Barely Blur. At 50 years old, he’s been living off the grid for over half his life. He’s never had a real job, never paid taxes, never been in a committed relationship. A good-natured henchman with a complicated and lonely past and a passion for LSD microdosing, he spends his time hopscotching across state lines in his beloved camper van, running sometimes shady, often dangerous errands for a powerful and ruthless operation he’s never troubled himself to learn too much about. He has lots of connections, but no true ties. His longest relationships are with an old rescue dog that has post-traumatic stress and a childhood friend as deeply entrenched in the underworld as he is, who, lately, he’s less and less sure he can trust.
Out of the blue, one of Will's many burner phones heralds a call from a 20-year-old woman claiming to be his biological daughter. She says she’s the product of one of his long-ago sperm donations; he’s half certain she’s AI. She needs his help. She’s entrenched in a widespread and nefarious plot involving Will’s employers, and for Will to continue to have any contact with her increasingly fuzzes the line between the people he is working for and the people he’s running from.
With his signature blend of haunting emotional realism and fast-paced intrigue, Dan Chaon populates his fractured America with characters who ring all too true. Gazing both back to the past and forward to an inevitable-enough-seeming future, SLEEPWALK examines where we’ve been and where we’re going and the connections that bind us, no matter how far we travel to dodge them or how cleverly we hide.
Audiobook available, read by John Pirhalla
