Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough
I am going to try not to repeat myself too much from my last review of her work, but I know I have many more readers now. When last I reviewed a work of awesomeness from Britain's queen of feminist thriller Sarah Pinborough it was her last book Dead to Her. Honestly, I would read a furniture catalog if it had her name on it. For those of you who do not know or have been living under a rock, SP is a bestselling author most famous for the novel Behind Her Eyes which became a Netflix series and was one of the most talked-about shows in the platform’s history.
No small feat Behind Her Eyes is miracle in many ways. It was marketed as having the most insane ending in both novel and TV streaming form and pulled off the much-debated ending. I remember when the book was released Sarah signed it at our local bookstore Mysterious Galaxy. At the time during the Q and A, I admitted as a fan of her work I was worried that the marketing was setting an impossibly high bar. Then I read the book. Like many others in the last few pages, my jaw dropped.
The other magic trick BHE pulled was completely rebooting the publishing career of Sarah Pinborough who was known for her excellent horror novels that had modest sales. Forget the sales for a minute The Dog-Faced Gods Trilogy (Forgotten Gods in the states) is a dystopian horror masterpiece that has some of the creepiest serial killings I have read almost ever. The speculative elements written Pre-Brexit are underrated, and perhaps it is time I revisit. While those three books are personal favorites probably the best novel in the Pinborough canon might be her pandemic novel The Death House released five years before the real thing.
Behind her Eyes started a new era for Pinborough who has found a sweet spot in the growing genre of thrillers for women about women. This area was made famous by Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train but Pinborough is becoming the master. She wrote a YA thriller 13 minutes that in many ways was the bridge between eyes but it was BHE that marked the new direction. As I said in the review of Dead to Her, the last book SP has created a series of subtle feminist thrillers. What do I mean by subtle, They are feminist not in a raised fist militant way fighting against the system. Sure novels like the Handmaid’s Tale for example are obvious statements against systematic patriarchy.
The last couple Pinborough novels are about the day to day death of a thousand cuts, and daily patriarchy in every way that Margaret Atwood deals with the system. Dead to Her is a book that appears to be a book about the “other younger woman” but that is misdirection and ends up sparking a very different conversation. I am sure in the wake of Gone Girl there are thousands of women trying to write the novel to inherit the tone. What made Sarah Pinborugh different is she had a long career beforehand. She had written trilogies, Fairy tale adaptations, and media-tie-in novels, and let's face it she knows what the hell she was doing. She was an English teacher, and born storyteller.
Her grasp of structure, narrative drive, plotting and subtle character moments is all top-notch. Much of the publishing industry has treated this phase like she is a new author on the scene, but you don’t write novels like Insomnia if you are a newbie.
Oh yeah, I reviewing Insomnia. I am going to talk about this novel, but again I went in cold and suggest this reading experience. More than any of the other feminist thrillers this one leans on horror, and Sarah’s horror skills more than ever. I am not sure it is for everyone but the target audience will gobble this up for good reason. I am not the target audience, I likely would not read this novel if I wasn’t a fan of the author. There are authors I will anything they write, and she is one of them.
Insomnia is the story of Emma, the mother of two, and it was interesting coming off Sundial by Catriona Ward because some of the dynamics of motherhood were strangely similar. Both have novels with mothers who have strained relationships, with their daughters. It was interesting back to back for me. Emma is a professional mother, a divorce lawyer with two kids, and a stay-at-home husband. Everything seems grand until her 40th birthday approaches.
You see Emma has kept a secret all these years from her family. Her mother is not dead, but alive and in mental hospital where she has been since she went crazy and tried to kill Emma’s older sister Phoebe. This happened on their mother’s 40th birthday. Emma has dreaded her 40th birthday fearing her mind will slip too.
Suddenly 40 doesn’t seem that old to me but one of the subtle feminist themes SP is working with here is the fear of aging that many women live with. As a man I feel a little out of place talking about this, but it is the theme of the novel. 40 is one of those ages when people stop talking about their ages and don’t forget we as men are advised never to ask a woman her age. This novel will be marketed as a thriller as they attract a larger audience but let us face the truth. Insomnia is a horror novel whose monster is a woman’s 40th birthday. Sound interesting. It is and you should read it. Considering the space the industry wants Pinborough stories to live in, it is a genius turn.
OK, last warning before I get into details…
That sense Insomnia is a paranoid feminist horror masterpiece. As the date approaches day by day, Emma loses everything through a series of plot twists. If there is a challenge to the book some of these twists are complicated, but no problem for SP. As Emma starts to lose sleep the events quickly spiral into paranoia and the reader will question her sanity just as Emma does herself. The 40th birthday becomes a monster lurking in the shadows, excellently off screen like the shark in Jaws. It is coming, stepping closer, day by day, hour by hour. Emma loses her mother, husband, her sister, and kids one at a time. The pain of betrayal building to the worst moment when she loses her job.
Lets talk about Emma’s job for a moment. There is a scene when Emma is on the phone with a man who she represented in a divorce who flirts with her. She is nice to him, even goes to dinner with him because of her job, but as wires start to fray she gets mad at him. “Why did you take the children from Miranda if you never have them?” She goes on to say “Because it smacks of sexism and the worst of the 1970s behavior.”
Emma as a character benefitted from sexism, she hurt other women in the process, but as all the walls start coming down she sees the strings of Patriarchy start to tug at her. I don’t know if SP plots these novels to craft this message or just the nature of Patriarchy worms his ugly head in. This scene is important to make a statement one of the worst things of sexism is how women end up doing it to each other. There are moments in the novel where Emma gets herself into further trouble by trusting the woman she thinks she can relate too. So that moment when Emma comforts the sexist man flirting with her is the turning point for her to solve the mystery.
One of the best moments of the book comes when Emma goes to speak to that man's wife Miranda. Miranda talks about the fights “I expected him to behave like an adult” she’s saying “Instead I let him wind me up like some toy and play games with me that made everyone think I was crazy.” The fears of aging is not just a monster these characters fear, but the paranoia is used against them.
This makes Insomnia an immersive paranoid thriller that is deeply relatable to women that are Sarah Pinborough’s target audience. A genius work of feminist horror that will probably be overlooked for that aspect. Like Dead to Her, it provides some uncomfortable moments for us male readers, but you know what? It ain’t about us.
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