Sleepwalker

by John Toomey

Stuart Byrne is a young, beautiful, single businessman who finds his perfect life sabotaged by a growing awareness of his own superficiality. Nauseated by his own helplessness, struck by a creeping lethargy, Stuart tumbles through a tumultuous week of excess, promiscuity, deception, cowardice, and regret, and in the process manages to trade his slick perfection for a fantastic, and darkly hilarious, catastrophe. A deadpan comedy about the rather unfunny void in the center of many modern lives, "Sleepwalker" explores how our trying to fill that void can be just as destructive as ignoring it, and how the world will always let the beautiful get away with murder.

Genres: Literature, Fiction

262 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 2010

Reviews

[Sai]

Sleepwalker was drawn out, nothing like the description to my amusement and while not life changing. It is well written, though it feels like some big kids words were thrown in there when unnecessary to validate the fact. None the less. Certain words were poignant. I stole a fair share of quotes.

Story wise? Weak, though entirely realistic. We all know that one guy who has everything and somehow constantly finds a way to fuck it up or complain. I dated him, and much like the protagonist he's unaware of his deep flaws and instead strips away from everything else to remain ensconced in his throne if self aggrandizement. We all know that guy, I just dated him.

It was a decent read I just wish it had something like a tangible ending. Purpose of creation. The book was just missing pieces.

[Brooke Morris-Chott]

Horrible, dull, anticlimactic, silly--I could go on but unlike Toomey I don't need to prove that I own a thesaurus. A bit of advice to the author: just because you sprinkle your sentences with million-dollar words doesn't make you introspective and deep, nor does it make your writing good. A decent Scrabble player perhaps, but not a writer.

[Kathryn]

This was filled with what I call "History Boys moments" (based on a line from that play) where you read something that you thought was specific just to you on a page of a book. There's a strange meta-narrator conceit, but it's easy enough to get over.

[Tj]

Some uncertain structural issues but enjoyable, highly amusing, and keeps making you turn pages. Good style of writing too. Take a chance on it, read over a weekend and feel better for having done so

[Sanahana]

The characters and the plot were too one dimensional. They never made it off the page for me...couldn't get through this one.

[Jeremy Hornik]

Yeah, I'm probably never going to finish reading this. Kinda boring.