What I love most about Dan Chaon is that his writing is impossible to define by any mere genre. His latest novel, SLEEPWALK, is no exception.

Whenever I come across a unique work such as this one, I attempt to give readers an adequate comp so that they can have a good starting point. As I was scrolling through the myriad of blurbs for SLEEPWALK, I could find only one that came close to what I experienced while reading it: FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS…if Hunter S. Thompson’s novel was set in a sort of apocalyptic future that looks like a strip-mined version of our current world if we continue along the path we are currently on. Chaon’s protagonist spends a good deal of the story strung out on LSD-laced mini bottles of Tito’s vodka.

"SLEEPWALK is a wild ride. It’s an unputdownable novel that is never dull and so beautifully written that it is a simple pleasure just to get lost in the prose and a frightening new world that could resemble ours in the future."

The novel opens with Will Bear traveling in his custom-built motor home, passing a joint back and forth with a young Filipino man. Liandro is manacled at the ankles while Will delivers him to a pre-determined location that is given to him from one of the dozens of burner phones he has in his cabin. While on the road, they scan the desolate landscape of what was once the US and through different weather patterns and unsafe fallout from the dark sky above. Once he accomplishes his task, Will continues to roam the highways with his dog, Flip, as his sole companion. He chats occasionally with a band of “friends” who can guide him to food, shelter or repair work, as well as any updates on the deadly world around him.

The year is never given, and all we know of Will is that he is 50 years old, approximately 6’2”, quite stocky with a full beard and a ponytail. We spend a good deal of time in the past with his alcoholic, psychotic mother, who truly messed him up as a boy and set him on his current loner path. Chaon never spends any time describing how the world got the way it is now. We just know that the US that Will crisscrosses constantly has been ravaged by disease, famine and all sorts of natural maladies to the point that life is a pale shade of what it used to look like.

Will’s life will be completely rocked when he receives a call on one of his burners, using one of his many aliases, by a young woman calling herself Cammie. It turns out that back in college, Will had been talked into donating his sperm to make some side cash. Now, over 20 years later, Cammie claims to have traced her lineage back to his donation. As Will determines she knows a little too much about him for this to a complete scam, he continues to speak with her. She eventually lets on that she has been in contact with other recipients of his sperm and that the final tally of his offspring is over 160.

This is too much for Will to handle, so he seeks out Tim Ribbons, who became his legal guardian after his mother was killed in Alaska. Tim convinces Will that Cammie is a con artist and part of a sinister network that he must find, infiltrate and bring down by any means necessary. Oh, did I mention that Will is also a brutal mercenary killer when he needs to be?

SLEEPWALK is a wild ride. It’s an unputdownable novel that is never dull and so beautifully written that it is a simple pleasure just to get lost in the prose and a frightening new world that could resemble ours in the future. Will Bear is a character you cannot help but like. It’s time well spent just to be by his side for a few hours to share in his incredibly unique life.