Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman
A Genre Mixer About Media Consumption
Noah Fairchild, the main protagonist of Clay McLeod Chapman’s dystopian novel Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, is worried about his parents. The fortysomething progressive Democrat lives with his wife and daughter in New York City, a place that’s vastly different from where he grew up in Richmond, Virginia.
Like many modern Americans, Noah’s relationship with his family has become strained due to sharp political differences. His parents are constantly watching Fax News (yes, Fax News with an “a”) and they insist that a reckoning is coming.
They believe in an intricate web of conspiracy theories. Soon, they claim, everyone will wake up and open their eyes to the truth. A great apocalyptic revolution will begin.
At the beginning of the novel, Noah hasn’t heard from his parents in awhile. He tries to call them, but they never pick up. He calls his brother, who still lives near their mom and dad, and he promises to check on them. But Noah never hears back.
Worried that something terrible has happened, Noah makes the journey to his mom and dad’s house, leaving his wife and daughter behind. After completing the seven hour drive, he is confronted with the grotesque reality of what his parents have become.
But it’s not just his family. All over the country, people seem to suddenly be demonically possessed. Like the folks infected with the rage virus in the 28 Days Later movies, they form zombie-like mobs and commit brutal, violent acts that turn the country into a dystopian hellscape. Will Noah survive the trip home? Will he ever see his wife and daughter again?
I’m impressed by Chapman’s ability to mix several horror subgenres together in a way that feels organic. The novel has elements of the possession, zombie, psychological, found footage (large chunks of the novel are transcripts from videos and broadcasts), and body horror genres. It’s rare to see all of them combined in a way that doesn’t seem forced.
A Hard-Hitting Story
As you can already tell, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes has the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. This is an absolutely relentless novel. Twenty-five years ago, its storyline would have been considered an over the top fantasy. Today? Well, some of it is still kind of over the top. But most is disturbingly plausible.
Chapman writes in a frantic, rapid fire style that fits with the novel’s relentless pace. The vocabulary and diction are relatively simple and straightforward. Wake Up and Open Your Eyes isn’t hard to read, from a writing style perspective, but the novel’s content takes a toll after awhile.
Along with all the violence and gore, the book also features copious amounts of deeply unpleasant sexual content. The story is already disturbing enough as it is. I really didn’t need to read about the incredibly grotesque orgies that many of the “possessed” people participate in. This stuff is obviously intended as satire, but it’s excessive and unnecessary.
This book will be triggering to many people. If you’re looking for a ray of hope, forget it. It offers nothing but carnage, chaos, and despair, although it delivers these themes in an entertaining and darkly amusing way.
The most insightful parts of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes are when Chapman takes a break from Noah’s perspective and delves into the lives of his brother, sister in law, and teenage nephew. None of these people are inherently evil, but the propaganda they consume is insidiously effective at preying on their deepest fears and insecurities.
Who wouldn’t want a chance to expose “crisis actors” who are faking school shootings, consume a magic supplement to make yourself look young and beautiful again, or take sweet revenge against the bullies who torment you and the girls who reject your advances?
Fax News and propaganda social media accounts offer these people (and countless others) the tantalizing opportunity to *finally* be happy/admired/respected/whatever they want. All they have to do is, you guessed it – wake up and open their eyes!
Rating
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes doesn’t need to be so unrelenting to get its point across, but it’s an effective and memorable novel that could be remembered as a quintessential work of the 2020s.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 8
