SOURCE: "Hypnotist, Heal Thyself," in The New York Times Book Review, Vol. 96, January 6, 1991, p. 11.

In the review below, Tallent discusses the interplay of the ordinary with the extraordinary in Doctor Sleep.

A harrowing wakefulness sets the tone for Madison Smartt Bell's sixth novel. Adrian Strother is an American living in London, a recovered heroin addict and practicing hypnotherapist who is expertly gentle with his clientele of insomniacs and phobics; on eight hours a night, he'd make quite a trustworthy narrator. He has the tolerant cool that is characteristic of Mr. Bell's protagonists, an observant detachment backed, in his case, by his prowess in the martial arts. But as Doctor Sleep begins, Adrian, his sleeplessness resisting his own mesmeric powers, is treading delicately along an insomniac edge where consciousness dissolves two ways—into manic hallucination or dulled, drifting numbness. Slyly, this "thriller," as its jacket copy has it, shines...