“In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare.
One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanting to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.
Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.” –Amazon’s summary.
Stephen King is basically the be-all and end-all of writers to me. I am never disappointed after reading any of his novels, and the man has SO MANY! The amount of talent this one man holds is insane.
Anyway, THIS story is truly a treat. I love a good story – novel, movie, show – that has badass, inspirational women, and this novel is full of them! Women who are strong-willed, devoted, who fight for what’s right, and are unapologetic about it all. Women who want to survive.
Stephen King has a knack for shoving a mirror up to society and forcing people to look at the dark asepcts of our society as a whole but also each of us individually. His stories often have monsters and/or supernatural spooks, but there is also always at least one character who is completely human yet is worse than any inhuman villain that could be conjured up by that fascinating mind of his. Perhaps that’s because truth always hurts more, and the dark aspects of human nature which King likes to incorporate into his stories are very, very real. And I felt this very clearly in this story. Because even though the women are the victims of this “disease” or “curse,” they are still labeled the enemy by a certain group of men and attacked when they are utterly defensless. The kind of men who, when the women were awake, demanded complete control over them, and now that they can’t touch them or reach them in any way, they have lost that control and seek to gain it back the only way they ever know how to solve anything – violence.
This story is like a wake-up call for humanity. It makes you think about what kind of world you want to live in and if you are willing to put in the effort to make that world a reality. It makes you think about how you act towards the people you care about most and how you should appreciate them while you have them. It’s a story of confusion and loss but also about hope and redemption. It’s a truly beautiful story from the minds of two members of an extremely talented family. It really felt like I was reading a highly important piece of literature. Even if you’ve never read Stephen King because you aren’t into horror, you should really give this one a chance 🙂
For All Story Lovers! 