Self-published book of the month: Café Insomniac by Mark Capell

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/07/cafe-insomniac-mark-capell-self-published-book-month

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Justin, a 25-year-old teacher, is struck down by a "mythical beast … a dragon that even St George would have trouble slaying": insomnia. He begins to lose the ability to sleep, little by little, until he's surviving on snatches here and there. He loses his much-loved job. He decides to open a cafe, catering to the other wakeful observers of the night: "Shift workers, taxi drivers, DJs and clubbers, doctors and nurses, burlesque performers – and insomniacs, of course. All grateful for a relaxed place to go that fills the night-time hours."

Mark Capell's odd but dreamily compulsive novel Café Insomniac begins as Justin opens the doors for the first time. There are few customers, to start with – a man he dubs the Leaner, who tells him, enigmatically, "whatever happens, I can help you". A woman in the "shortest of black leather skirts", who sits for hours, reading Pride and Prejudice.

Then we come to the plot point on which the novel ostensibly hangs: the murder of one of Justin's customers. Justin is questioned by the police, threatened by strange phone calls, haunted by memories of the dead girl. He doesn't sleep, and the edges of his world become blurry and fantastical. His eyes start watering – but only when it's raining. A girl who is almost identical to the murder victim begins working in the cafe. There are vampires – maybe – and a competing cafe, "as beautiful as a painting, like a David Hockney landscape full of vivid, yet sympathetic, blues and greens". The sound of footsteps, following him, everywhere.

I've heard this type of sound before. It can be footsteps, it can be a clock ticking, it can be a word heard over and over again. One thing these noises have in common is that they sound menacing. But they're not the noises they pretend to be. It's the sound of my insomnia, that's what it is … What it is for certain, indisputably, is a desperate sign that I really need to sleep.

Amid lucid dreams, a troupe of musically gifted homeless people and a high-wire record attempt, everything shifts and spins around Justin, who's been awake for days: "Five or six. Or is it seven. I'm losing count. Even for me, this is unknown territory."

There has been a little spate of insomnia novels in recent months: Kenneth Calhoun's Black Moon, which sees most of the planet cursed with sleeplessness; Karen Russell's Sleep Donation, featuring another near-future insomnia epidemic. Capell's addition is restricted to one man, but the author's choice of the first-person, present tense narrator sucks his reader into the weird, chaotic, dissonant world of the insomniac.

9:33 am. I'm in bed, staring at the ceiling. I find this a strange time of day. It's after the rush hour. The sounds beyond my window, of people scurrying to work and children off on the school run, have died away, to be replaced by nothing. To me, this is an eerier time of day than, say, 2am. But I know I'm in the minority … I'm facing a fourth day of complete sleeplessness. I think it's a fourth day. The concept of days, of beginnings and endings, is losing its meaning.

Café Insomniac sags a little in the middle, when Capell becomes a little too liberal with the dead-endy "it was all a dream" tangents and loses his forward momentum slightly. But perhaps this is all part of the plan. There may be a murder at the heart of this novel, but it all feels very far away – dreamlike and insubstantial. What Café Insomniac is really about is sleeplessness itself, and Capell captures it rather well.