The Insomniac Society (ePub)

What a wonderful idea, not to sleep anymore. Yet, if it happens too often or you spend too much time lying awake in bed, it becomes insomnia and can even be pretty frightening. Thus, Claire, Jacques, Michèle, Lena and Hervé become a therapeutical insomniac group lead by specialist Hélène to find sleep again. It is due to quite diverse reasons that the five of them spend their nights roaming. Hervé is stressed out by his job, Lena misses her father, a former baker who always got up very early in the morning, Michèle is haunted by the children she lost and Jacques by a fatal mistakes that happened months ago. Claire is just fed up with her whole life, her job, her relationship, her living in small village outside Paris. The five strangers quickly become a small but fond community not only united by their inability to sleep.

Even though all of the characters are at a critical point in their life where they are confronted with making tremendous and far-reaching decisions and where they have to confront inconvenient truths of themselves and their lives, Gabrielle Levy’s novel nevertheless has to offer some feel-good factor. I adored the five patients from the start, they are drawn with so much care and love that you simply cannot not like them. They are ordinary people, people you can meet anywhere, at work, in the stairwell, on the street, but they immediately develop a bond due the fact they form a brotherhood in suffering.

Beautifully written, I simply floated through the novel enjoying sharing some time with the small group who meet as strangers and whom you leave as friends. The author wonderfully captured those small moments, hazardous encounters that can make a difference in life.