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BOOK REVIEW: Nod by Adrian Barnes
Paul is an etymologist – his life revolves around the exploration of words and their origins, and writing books about their history and transformation.
As the end of the world begins he is working on his next book, the eponymous Nod, which focuses on words and phrases that have fallen out of common usage and understanding.
Anyway, in forgetting words, my thesis went, we abandon them. But the realities those banished words gave voice to don’t vanish: old, unmanned realities lurk eternally in dark woods, in nursery tales, police reports, and skittish memories. Like Grimm wolves.
All the old, whispered words still exist – fantastic words and phrases like ‘babies in the eyes’, ‘cavalry clover’, ‘doomrings’, ‘mavworm’ ‘Blemmye’. Thousands and thousands of them. And when we hear those words, even in the antiseptic light of the twenty-first century, we feel a slight breeze, a chill presence we can’t quite identify.
After psychosis sets in for those who cannot sleep, and Nod falls into the wrong hands, Paul’s world begins to spiral out of control in a way he never could have imagined.
‘Watch this.’ He turned and faced the angel-watchers, smiling grimly. Cupping his hands around his mouth, and without even bothering to try to sound like he meant it, he yelled, ‘Holy shit! Those aren’t angels. They’re devils!’
The effect was instantaneous. There isn’t much distance, once you’re forced to think about it, between a smile and a grimace of terror. Just two slightly different sets of facial contortions. On the street behind us, a hundred expressions shifted, and we all entered yet another hell. A man began to scream in a little girl voice while the skeleton woman dropped to her knees, still gazing upward, and began to deepen the wounds on her forearms with ragged fingernails. Within seconds, the rest had followed suit, falling to the ground and grovelling among the glass.
As there seems to be no explanation for just why the Awakened are… perpetually awake, and they draw ever closer to death; as The Dream filled with golden light and a feeling of well-being continues to call to Paul; and as he tries to find a safe place for Zoe, the mute Sleeper girl he and Tanya stumbled upon and took in, the question becomes not so much about how to survive this situation, but rather how to ride it out until the inevitable end.
The rest of this review can be found HERE!
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