Secret Life of Sleep

December 9, 2013
We all sleep, but how often do we consider what goes on while we engage in this (usually) nightly practice? This impressive account from Duff (The Alchemy of Illness) presents the science of sleep without putting its readers to sleep. She intersperses personal anecdotes amid her array of data, which ranges from laboratory sleep studies to poetry and folklore. Some of her examples might already be familiar to readers, but here they serve to show the universality of sleep. The scientific work Duff seamlessly draws into the narrative serves to illuminate cultural understandings. For example, the mythic spirits that visit us in our sleep—the kinds that come to Scrooge at the height of his Christmas cynicism—are described in their literary contexts, before being analyzed on their biological bases. Dreams, from the barely memorable to the life changing, play a prominent role in this text, and Duff addresses the anxieties and fears of sleep itself that keep us awake at night. We learn, too, about what differentiates a waking state from its sleepy counterpart. Sleep as a phenomenon exists just outside of our conscious awareness, and can be difficult to study objectively, yet Duff leads an absorbing foray into the vibrant activity that we otherwise sleep right through.