The Sleep

by Caitlin Horrocks

This inventive story, exclusive for Kindle, tells the story of the town of Bounty, the Rasmussen family, and the sleep. It started one November, when Al Rasmussen stood in his family room, arms outstretched, knee-deep in a nest of mattresses and bedding. The sideboard had a hot plate and an electric kettle plugged into a power strip. He opened drawers filled with crackers, tinned soup, vitamin C pills and canned juice to prevent scurvy. “Hibernation,” he announced. “Human hibernation.” In the past, Bounty had always wintered the way towns do: gas bills and window plastic, blankets and boots; resident bought cream for cracked skin. “Sleep,” Al said, there in his living room. Of course this was before the cameras, before the outsiders.

 

Caitlin Horrocks is author of the forthcoming story collection This Is Not Your City. Her fiction has received the Plimpton Prize, and has appeared in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009, The Pushcart Prize XXXV, The Paris Review, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She lives in Michigan.

Genres: Short Stories

16 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 26, 2010

About the author

Caitlin Horrocks is author of the novel The Vexations, named one of the top ten books of 2019 by the Wall Street Journal. Her story collection Life Among the Terranauts is coming out January 2021 from Little, Brown. Her debut story collection This Is Not Your City was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her stories and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Tin House, One Story, and other journals and anthologies. She is an Editor-at-Large for the Kenyon Review and teaches at Grand Valley State University, and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives with her family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reviews

[Penny Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating concept - hibernate for a few months, instead of suffering the cold and loneliness of the small town winter.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sleep is a story with a speculative premise handled in a realist, workshop‑polished register. While conceptually ambitious, its conventional tone and well‑behaved structure constrain the imaginative stakes, keeping the story’s potential strangeness and metaphysical pressure safely contained.

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a re-read. i think i read it the first time in college. i love the collective narrative voice. it’s always such a fun one.

[Steve Middendorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this in The Best American Short Stories 2011. It's about a small town in the northern part of the US where the residents decide that sleeping through a long, cold winter is better than living through it. This could be Watkins or Richmond Minnesota.

PS I believe Amazon sell this as a short story. I borrowed the whole book in Kindle format from Hennepin County Library

[Jay C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great premise for a short story and well executed. Full post and "review" at my blog, Bibliophilopolis: http://bibliophilica.wordpress.com/20...