Gender Dynamics and the Apocalypse Collide in Owen and Stephen King’s Sleeping Beauties

They call the phenomenon “Aurora.” Suddenly, everywhere, women fall asleep and their bodies are covered in a mysterious fungus that cocoons them from head to toe, leaving them in perpetual comas, dreaming of a mysterious elsewhere. If roused, they become violent and brutally attack whoever woke them up. The waking half of humanity—the men—turns desperate. Some commit suicide, others look to internet urban legends for answers.
In a women’s prison in the Appalachian town of Dooling lies Evie Black, a woman who still goes to sleep and wakes up whenever she wants, who heals incredibly fast, and who may be the key to the entire mystery. As the men of Dooling divide into factions, some wanting to kill Evie, some to protect her, others reveling in their own sadistic whims amid the chaos, prison psychiatrist Clint Norcross desperately tries to discover the true nature of his inmate in the hopes she can undo the effects of the plague.
Though men must live with the Aurora’s fallout, Sleeping Beauties is a book about women. From the quiet opening, following the members of Dooling’s female population going about their daily lives, to the scenes of the town descending into chaos as the plague descends, to the presence of a demonic Gaia figure with a twisted take on gender politics, women are the most important thing in the Kings’ world, and they refuse to make them into victims or stereotypes. They are given lives, backstories, and agency—there is police dispatcher Linny Mars, who stays awake to the point of psychosis because she is the glue holding the entire town together; there is Sheriff Lila Norcross, who keeps the peace while trying to stave off micro-naps and hallucinations; there is Michaela Morgan, the news anchor who tries to unravel the mystery while taking hits of meth and coke to stay awake. Even the members of the First Thursday Book Club, who slip into unconsciousness while drinking wine and chatting about Atonement are given their own histories and motivations, and a chance to face their fates with dignity.
The Kings also allow their heroes and villains a degree of complexity. Evie’s assumptions about toxic masculinity aren’t entirely wrong, given the town’s male population only takes about five days to declare mob rule, but her manipulations (as well as her solutions) reinforce the harmful stereotypes she claims to hate. The chosen “hero” in her designed scenario is a pathological, egotistical liar who represses his horrifying past and accepts being cast as the One Good Man in her little apocalyptic drama. Even the most tenacious villain is a desperate father struggling with the condition’s affect on his wife and daughter. Granted, he’s far from saintly, considering we’re introduced to him as he roughs up a kid, and he has no qualms about threatening the lives of children to get his way. But witnessing evidence of a conscience before he decides to go down the dark path makes his choices more tragic than monstrous.
Like the best of the elder King’s work, Sleeping Beauties is a book that acknowledges its characters’ flaws—putting them under pressure and letting the darkness slowly ooze out—while exploring a larger idea (in this case, the toxic fallout of modern gender dynamics) in a way that will resonate with every woman or man who reads it.
Preorder Sleeping Beauties, available September 26.