Black Moon: A Novel [Paperback]

For fans ofThe Age of MiraclesandThe Dog Stars,Black Moonis a hallucinatory and stunning debut that Charles Yu calls “Gripping and expertly constructed.”

Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows.  Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, has succumbed to the telltale red-rimmed eyes, slurred speech and cloudy mind before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world.  Yet Biggs can still sleep, and dream, so he sets out to find her.

He ventures out into a world ransacked by mass confusion and desperation, where he meets others struggling against the tide of sleeplessness.  Chase and his buddy Jordan are devising a scheme to live off their drug-store lootings; Lila is a high school student wandering the streets in an owl mask, no longer safe with her insomniac parents; Felicia abandons the sanctuary of a sleep research center to try to protect her family and perhaps reunite with Chase, an ex-boyfriend.  All around, sleep has become an infinitely precious commodity. Money can’t buy it, no drug can touch it, and there are those who would kill to have it. However, Biggs persists in his quest for Carolyn, finding a resolve and inner strength that he never knew he had.

Kenneth Calhoun has written a brilliantly realized and utterly riveting depiction of a world gripped by madness, one that is vivid, strange, and profoundly moving.Longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction

“Haunting. . . . Many authors have tackled the mystique of sleeplessness — but few have done so with the grotesque grace and poetic insight ofBlack Moon. . . . Its totemic power builds into something heart-wrenchingly resonant. . . . [Calhoun’s] prose-rich passages of hallucinogenic abandon aren’t psychedelic—they’re razor-sharp.”—NPR.org
 
“Intriguing…Startling and evocative…Compelling, with lc.