... a kind of blues or threnody in minor chords with subtle, frenzied overtones ... In order for this kind of novel to exceed the narrative tropes that define it, a keen poetic intelligence is necessary. Our author knows this, and uses that knowledge to effect; investing the narrative with linguistic resonance rooted in associations derived from root definitions. For a scholar of humanities and social and political thought, which our author also is, this is not rare. But in the refinements that she brings to her writing, less concerned with character than the atmosphere that characters and events inspire—a palette led by shimmering layers of chiaroscuro and the reveries attached to them—her literary skill clarifies.
The Eyelid is a highly allusive work, namechecking everyone from Paul Éluard and Victor Hugo to Saint-Pol-Roux, a French Symbolist whose notion of 'idéorealism' involved the use of art as a locus to overlay reality and the world of ideas. Chrostowska is not above being playful ... If the pervasive literary allusions provide one unifying force throughout the novel, another is the use of irony ... a densely philosophical novel that addresses a number of undeniably pressing concerns for early 21st-century society: the pressures of conformity, the demands for increased productivity in a connected and information-saturated world, and the withering of the imagination as a creative force ... the book sometimes plays its hand a bit too forcefully, with swaths of polemic shoehorned into the text in place of narrative ... This slim novel contains an outsized ambition and an authorial agenda that are all too rare in today’s literary culture. That it doesn’t always succeed in its execution is perhaps forgivable; it reminds us of the subversive nature of the individual mind and its power to dream itself into a better existence.
... an exquisite piece of literature which might well become an instant cult book until it makes its way to a much deserved place at the top of any list of utopian-dystopian fiction masterworks. Timely and timeless, written in the style of the most extraordinary fabulists, and recalling some encouraging ideas from the past centuries’ revolutionaries and utopianists, The Eyelid is a poetic exploration of sleep and a guided excursion to a marvelously idiosyncratic land of dreams. Wisely insurrectional, like any authentic aesthetical endeavor, it confronts us with a fictional environment — one not so different from our own society — in which both sleeping and dreaming are being culturally and politically threatened ... a refreshed dream of dreams inspired by the great dreamers of all times — Schwob, Pessoa, Swift, Schulz, Manganelli, Carroll, and Poe — and invoked from a para-modern nonconformist past. The story Chrostowska dares to dream in her intensely poetic, straightforward narrative style, is presented as a series of powerfully evocative short scenes taken from a journey through the looking-glass of lucid unconsciousness.
The Eyelid imagines a future in which wakefulness is a pharmaceutically powered state imperative to keep people productive and compliant. At odds with this arrangement is an unnamed narrator ... Together, the narrator and the ambassador aid and abet nocturnal imaginations across Paris (now part of the globe-spanning Greater America). These revolutionary acts reveal other lives, stories, and possibilities for people living in a waking nightmare of totalitarian, market-driven, pill-popping, screen-surfing drudgery. S. D. Chrostowska’s dystopian fiction, learned and lithe in its storytelling, holds up a cracked mirror to our time and place, daring us to take an honest look—and dream.
What value do dreams, imagination, and sleep have in a world where productivity is the highest goal of human life? Set in a dystopian, near-future Paris, The Eyelid is a philosophical short novel that attempts to answer this question ... The book’s elegant dialogue, descriptions of Parisian history, and social and philosophical themes bring to mind classics such as Gulliver’s Travels and The Last Days of Socrates, with a bit of 1984 and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman mixed in. Certainly a unique combination, if it weren’t for the references to artificial intelligence, this book could easily have been written in the 1800s. I found it refreshing! ... In my opinion, The Eyelid is a fun little challenge, meant as a dire warning against pushing productivity and exploitative labour ahead of dreaming and creativity. Though it may not be suitable for readers looking for fast-paced action or a deep, twisting narrative, fans of classic literature, philosophy, and social critique should find plenty to appreciate.
The majority of the novel is dedicated to the exposition of Chevauchet's oneiric ideas, his manifesto, and his plans for revolution. The rhetoric is thus built on ethos more than pathos, stimulating thought more than emotion ... Mimetically, the book, too, is serialized into small sips of chapters, emulating the narrator's processing and synthesis of his sage's information. The brevity of the book enhances the concentration of its thesis. The unnamed narrator becomes our guide, just as Chevauchet is his ... We get lines of sharp imagery delivered in luscious prose ... The Eyelid, in its very title, evokes that thin fold that separates wakefulness and dreaming. That veil between two worlds.
Chrostowska...is a fiercely intellectual writer, but in this hallucinatory portrait of a world robbed of dreams, she’s content to let her surrealistic journey play out freely ... it’s a hallucinatory story, steeped in existentialist philosophy and delivered in poetic, classical language. The novel can read like a work in translation, with the avant-garde aesthetics and interesting idiosyncrasies found in European novels laden with existentialist themes and absurdist imagery ... A slight but quick-witted and thoughtful philosophical parable that falls somewhere between Camus and Gaiman’s Sandman universe.
... alternately fun and stuffy ... Chrostowska at times overstuffs this Calvino-esque fairy tale with literary and academic references, but she succeeds in making Onirica a rebel worth rooting for. Determined readers will revel in the sheer fecundity of ideas in this fiercely imaginative acid trip of an allegory.
