Premise v. Story / REVIEW: Nod - Adrian Barnes

(A note: This is actually partly a book review, and also partly an exploration of another literary theme - hence why it's a bit long.)

• Year first released: 2017
• ISBN of the edition I read: 978-1785655814
• Publisher of the edition I read: Titan Books
• My rating (out of 5): 2

Nod is the perfect example of a literary conundrum that you come across from time-to-time. It begins on the back of the book. The first couple sentences of the back cover tell us:

Dawn breaks over Vancouver and no one in the world has slept the night before, or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same golden dream.

Probably you'll agree that this is an interesting premise: a world in which (almost) no one can sleep anymore, ever?! Just all of a sudden? Whoa! What's going to happen next?!

What, indeed.

Let's say you were going to write a book with this exact premise. Imagine for a moment what that might look like. Who would your characters be? What sorts of situations would they end up in? How would it resolve?

Barnes takes this premise in a specific direction. You would probably take it a completely different direction.

The question is: Would either of you be wrong? Is there a right direction for this book to evolve?

Of course not, right? An author can write a book however s/he pleases.

And yet, while reading Nod, many times throughout I couldn't help but think, This really isn't the direction I want to see this go. This doesn't feel right. Why is it playing out like this?

There are many reasons for this. And certainly I'm not going to propose a "better" way for the plot to have developed. Obviously this is entirely subjective. Despite this acknowledgment of subjectivity, though, somehow Nod still feels like it broke its promise.

On the surface, there isn't that much wrong with Nod. In fact, Barnes' writing is actually a little above average. I'd be happy to check out another of his books in the future. His play with words and phrases and their etymologies was much more interesting than I would have expected from such a book - this was a highly pleasant surprise. The pacing was fine. And our hero, Paul (who, as you no doubt guessed, is one of the few people left in the world who can still sleep), ended up being a worthwhile character to follow. I appreciated his motivations and his choices.

So how was the promise broken?

I can only theorize, but I believe it is something like this:

The description of Nod which I shared above only informs us of the book's premise. It tells us almost nothing of the book's story.

Sure, it's nice to not be told too much of the plot before you even open the cover. No one wants spoilers on the back covers of books. (A lesson that Jose Saramago's publisher could stand to learn, hint hint.)

And yet, when you only read the premise of a book - without a clue about the story itself - the book takes on an entirely new feeling. You can almost imagine the book as blank slate. The story can go anywhere at all...

...except that it can't. If you're holding a book in your hands, it's already been written and published. It turns out the story is already a very specific, narrow thing, and - more importantly - it can no longer be anything else.

For the most part, it wouldn't be fair to blame this on Barnes - most probably he had nothing to do with the back cover text; usually the publisher or editor decide that.

Yet no matter whose fault it is (even if it's mine, which I admit it could be), I was left with a book that just felt like it was something that it should't have been. If you, the reader, begin to question why a book plays out like it does - and you ultimately can't come up with a plausible, literary answer for it - then whose fault is this? - the reader's or the author's?

(Hint: I think it's the author's fault, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.)


What is your take on this? Premise v. story, "broken promises," and all of that? 


(By the way, I'll say one more thing about the "broken promise" of Nod: I don't mean for this to be much of a spoiler, but one promise that was more "objectively" broken - if I might be so bold - is in the mention of the "golden dream." This dream comes up very few times in the book, and never in any meaningful way. We never find out more about the dream, what it could mean, why it is that all the sleepers share this dream, or anything else of the sort. I can only wonder: why was it included at all? - or, if nothing else, why was it mentioned on the back cover?)