Sleeping Beauties (novel)

Did You Know?

• An excerpt was published on September 1, 2017, by Entertainment Weekly in their special The Ultimate Guide to Stephen King issue.
• In April 2017, Deadline Hollywood reported that Anonymous Content had purchased the television rights to the novel.
• IDW Publishing released a 10-part comic book adaptation of the novel created by novelist Rio Youers and artist Alison Sampson, with the first issue coming out in June 2020 and the final issue releasing in March 2022.

Plot

The story begins in Dooling, a run-down town in the fictional Appalachian Tri-Counties, where a strange woman beats two meth-cookers to death in their mobile home, sets the place on fire, and then calmly waits to be arrested by Sheriff Lila Norcross. Around the same time, a global illness emerges: women fall into a deep sleep, wrapped in a cocoon-like substance. This condition, called Aurora—a nod to the Sleeping Beauty princess—makes the sleeping women violently attack and kill any adult who tries to open their cocoons.

Lila’s husband, Clint, is the chief psychiatrist at the Dooling Correctional Institute for Women. He sees Aurora start to affect his patients just as the mysterious woman, now called Evie Black, is locked up there. As the sickness spreads through Dooling, the remaining awake women panic, leading to looting and riots. Lila herself succumbs to Aurora, and her alcoholic chief deputy, Terry Coombs, takes over as sheriff.

Terry then appoints Frank Geary, a hot-tempered former animal control officer, as his second-in-command. Meanwhile, Warden Janice Coates fires guard Don Peters for sexual harassment; in revenge, Peters drugs her with Xanax, leaving Clint to protect the few female inmates still awake. Clint interviews Evie and learns she is an “emissary” from an otherworldly being. This being believes women can build a society free of war, abuse, and other evils it blames on men.

Evie tells Clint he is “the Man” meant to protect her for “a week or so,” after which she will cure all the women of Aurora. Back in town, Frank and Terry deputize new recruits, including Peters and a juvenile delinquent named Eric Blass, and slowly restore order. Rumors spread that Evie can sleep and wake without trouble, which drives Frank to manipulate Terry into taking Evie from the prison to somehow save the sleeping women. Meanwhile, Clint’s son Jared and his friend Mary hide Lila and three other women in an empty house, fearing Frank will use their bodies as hostages.

Characters

Lila Norcross is married to Clint Norcross and serves as the town sheriff. She does not tolerate any argument and speaks with a dry, weary tone, a quality made worse by her sleep deprivation. When the story begins, she has been awake for more than twelve hours while working the night shift. She struggles to remain conscious in order to assist the community, but eventually falls to Aurora and then becomes the leader of the women in Our Place.

Clint Norcross works as a psychiatrist at the Dooling Correctional Institute for Women. He had intended to become a private therapist, but abandoned that plan on his first day after a patient named Paul Montpellier used the entire session to complain about being kicked out of his home for having an affair. The female inmates prefer him to other therapists because he treats them as human beings rather than as puzzles to be solved with ineffective exercises.

He genuinely believes his patients can improve and often thinks that in a perfect world, a given patient would never have been arrested. He considers most of the women to be decent people who simply had bad luck. For this reason, Eve selects him to watch over her and to demonstrate that a man's world is worth preserving. Frank Geary is the sole animal control officer in the town.

He has a very quick temper but always finds a way to justify it. For instance, when he punches a hole in his wall, he tells himself that sometimes you punch a wall to avoid punching the person in front of you. When he yells at his daughter, he tells himself that sometimes you have to yell to be heard. Despite his many faults, Frank sees himself as a good person, excusing his lack of self-control by calling it Bad Frank and labeling his better side Good Frank.

Eve views him as a symbol of what she regards as the worst qualities in men. Jeanette Sorley is an inmate serving time for manslaughter. She stabbed her abusive husband in the crotch with a screwdriver while both were high, then sat and watched him bleed to death. Clint believes Jeanette acted in self-defense, arguing that because of her husband's abuse, she would have either died or suffered lasting emotional trauma if she had not killed him first.

At the start of the story, Jeanette has maintained a good record for a long time and is working toward parole so she can see her son.

Reception

The novel was praised by The Guardian as an "epic, colourful story of global pandemic" that displays a "youthful vigour not seen in years." It received the Goodreads Choice Award for Horror in 2017, earning over 50,000 votes, and was a nominee for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel. A feminist critique from bound2books.com noted the book’s effort to engage with feminist ideas but pointed out shortcomings: a lack of representation for trans and intersex individuals, a superficial treatment of what happens when women vanish from essential jobs, and the hypersexualized, underdeveloped character of Evie Black.