Inspired Sleep: A Novel

by Robert Cohen

These days, Bonnie Saks is lucky to gets four consecutive hours of shut-eye, what with her bed-wetting young son, her unfinished doctoral thesis, her meager teaching salary, and the fact that she’s pregnant by a lover about as reliable as her ex-husband.

Meanwhile, Ian Ogelvie, an ambitious young research scientist, is setting up a study of a promising new sleep aid. Their chance encounter forms the backdrop for this richly exuberant portrait of contemporary America, encompassing everything from the slippery evasions of love to the intricate network that binds together the pharmaceutical industry, managed care, and a shadow population of lost, sleepless souls. At once entertaining and philosophic, Inspired Sleep heralds a major voice in American fiction.

Genres: Fiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Robert Cohen, Professor of English and American Literatures, is a novelist who teaches both literature and creative writing courses. His books include Amateur Barbarians, Inspired Sleep, The Here and Now, The Organ Builder, and a collection of short stories, The Varieties of Romantic Experience. Prior to teaching at Middlebury he taught at Harvard, Rice, the University of Houston, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. He earned a B.A. from University of California Berkeley and an MFA from Columbia. His stories and essays have appeared in Harpers, Paris Review, GQ, The Believer, and many other magazines, and his awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Writers Award, a Ribalow Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.

Source: Middlebury College.

Reviews

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I remember best about this interesting novel is the scene in which the heroine, Bonnie, finds her way into an Internet discussion group. "I don't quite know what I'm looking for," she says in introducing herself. "I've never been on the Internet before. ... But my friend said this news group can be a valuable resource for people trying to cope with anxiety." Others take the stage and there's some flaming and such, and then someone named Cress comes along singing the praises of some "really cool meds" she'd stolen from somebody. Her problem is that she ran out, and she doesn't even know what they were. She goes on at great length, revealing herself as a truly screwed up individual, until finally Bonnie asks if this is the Cress who baby-sits her kids. Yup. And being found out doesn't even seem to faze the gal.

That's a minor part of the story, but perhaps it gives a sense of the tone. I liked it, and feel ready to read it again.

[Candice · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is good and cynically humorous. I appreciated the insight into Big Pharm and academia and even the many obscure academic references I understood because I went to COLLEGE! LOL!! But it was sort of slow and meandering and felt like it was a story hobbled together as a framework for his ideas and opinions, which were intelligent and interesting, and I suppose many books are just that, but the plot sort of went in circles too long and all the characters were lost and ultimately irritating.

"The world was made of chemicals. It was only natural to use them. The history of pharmaceuticals was as rich and profuse as the history of pain, of humanity's discomfort with being; their twin fates entwined forever in the logo of snake and staff. Her case was nothing new. In every culture and epoch, in every far-flung corner of the globe, people were ravenous for relief. They'd take anything they could their hands on. Berries, herbs, mushrooms, the sap of trees, the leaves of plants, the oils and cartilage of ocean fish. Even if it didn't work. As if the taking itself was the cure."

[John Luiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Cohen has won numerous awards, and I can't quite understand why his
name and sales don't rank right up there with other contemporary writers
like Michael Chabon and Tom Perrotta. In INSPIRED SLEEP, Cohen examines the
public's dependence on/love affair with prescription drugs such as
anti-depressants. Chapters rotate between the perspective of two main
characters --Bonnie Saks, a divorced mother of two, and Ian Ogelvie, a
psychiatrist/researcher on a project designed to enhance REM sleep and
thereby elevate the subject's mood. Saks is an insomniac who becomes a
subject in Ogelvie's study at "Boston General" hospital. The novel explores
a lot of big issues -- such as the way today's medical researchers are in
bed with big pharma -- and all the room for corruption/lapses of ethics that
can create. The book also looks at the potential impact of placebos,
explained in detail by Ian as expectancy theory -- the idea that merely
wanting something to come true can bring about its fruition. It's
fascinating to watch the varied perspectives -- Bonnie's a cynic, who is
depressed about her life -- and Ian is an idealist, who has complete faith
in the medical model, believing that one day medicine can find a
drug-related cure for every human ailment -- emotional and physical. As much
as this book will get you thinking, though, the greatest joy comes from the
way Cohen writes. He drafts some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever
read. If you like this one, go back and read The Here and Now and The Organ
Builder. Both are terrific reads as well.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Cohen is indeed a "beautiful sentence writer" as one reviewer notes here. He also has an absolute handle, and a humane one, on what drives us and how we humans think.

In this way Cohen writes gorgeous novels that are fun to read -- they are witty in almost every sentence, but never at the expense of the characters.

I am always surprised that Cohen is not better-known. He crafts fine stories and very interesting novels. For writers who write wittily and sympathetically about our activities here on earth, I'd place him with Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Deborah Eisenberg, and Ehud Havazelet.

Although his novels are very different from Gary Shteyngart's antic ones, I'd also note similarities there: both are witty, perceptive, and, yes, remain kind to their characters.

One book reviewer said that Cohen brings to life the spirit of Saul Bellow in "Augie March." As a fan of that novel, I do think that Cohen -- like the early Bellow -- writes in a way that exults in the living, whether it is hard or sometimes lovely. Most of the time, even the hard ends up being beautiful in some way.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Robert Cohen can write, but this book went nowhere slowly. I suspect it might make a decent insomnia treatment, because I found it a big snooze. I thought there was a lot of unrealized potential here. I also wondered if Cohen grew tired while writing:

"Somewhere along the line the novel had lost its grip, come to seem tediously rear guard, arcane, burdensome and top heavy, like the dinosaurs."

[Sloane Tanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well written and engrossing. I didn't love the ending.

[Maggie Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very sophisticated, creative, and often philosophical. Loved the way Cohen writes, but I did find that the plot was a bit slow. Cohen would go on rants that were pretty off topic. Sometimes I found these rants beautiful and interesting, but other times I found myself thinking “what the hell am I reading?” I loved the way the novel was organized (focusing on different characters each chapter, especially the one focused on the preschoolers point of view, the chapter with psychology articles, the chapter on the online discussion board) and how he left some aspects of the story unsaid. Overall, however, I think the whole novel could’ve been a lot shorter and achieved the same result.

[Harriett Milnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book with a low rating on Goodreads. Really liked it; had lots of sub plots (big pharma, plight of research scientists in search of funding, single mother with two boys who can't sleep, preschool politics) that just went on and on.

[Elizabeth Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An academic novel of sorts featuring two down-on-their-luck protagonists. Bonnie Saks is a Thoreau specialist who's bored by and blocked on her thesis and stuck teaching composition part-time to students who turn in papers with titles like "Is Violins Ever Justified?" She's also a divorced single-mom with two young sons and another child on the way. Ian Ogelvie is a pharmaceutical researcher whose up-and-comer status seems to have evaporated even as his wonder-drug sleeping aide heads to market as a remedy for motion sickness. He hasn't recovered from his lover's rejection a few years earlier and bunks on his sister's sleep sofa after being burned out of his apartment. Ogelvie's new drug works wonders on Saks' life, and her turnaround crystallizes his doubts about the corrupt heart of big pharma. Like many "literary" writers, Cohen spends too much time on his characters' internal monologues and allows too much action to occur off the page. Yet sometimes when he allows his readers to watch a scene unfold in real time, he muffles the emotions of those interior voices, embracing the writer's dictum to show, not tell, just when the reader wants to know what the character is feeling. This is a funny book, but not as hilarious as the best academic novels like Jane Smile's Moo or Richard Russo's Straight Man. Still, once the story kicked in, it kept me turning the pages until I reached the satisfyingly redemptive ending.

[Janice · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was given to me by my good friend, Steve. Sorry, Steve, but I didn't find this book to be as interesting as you did. While Cohen can write eloquently, sometimes he gets carried away and loses his point. This is when "less is more" can be applied. I definitely enjoyed the Bonnie chapters more than the Ian chapters. I had a hard time determining his plot. Maybe I'm just not intelligent enough to get it!

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly too long, but this tale of a dangling woman works better than Bellow̕s Dangling Man. Cohen had a lot of examples to learn from. Intelligent writing.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cohen is virtuoso sentence writer and the book was engaging all the way to the end.

[Lemon1549 · Rating 1 out of 5]

boring, boring, boring............. nothing happened in this book. total waste of time

[Jennifer]

Pointless psycho-babble that never really goes anywhere. Felt like I wasted my time once I was done.

[Judy Mayhew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good writing here, and humour, too, but the characters didn't interest me much. The satire, if that was the aim, was too obscure.

[Mary Kinietz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little long, but overall good plot and characters.