  | Book Details Title: The Shapeless Unease |
Book DescriptionIn this astonishingly powerful memoir about insomnia, acclaimed novelist Samantha Harvey explores everything that is keeping her – and the nation – awake at night‘Insomnia has turned me into a haggler. I’m always looking for the next thing I can trade with it or the next thing I can get from it, or the next bit of leverage I can use to cut a deal. . .’For months Samantha Harvey has been enduring many sleepless nights in a row, grieving for her late cousin, angry about Brexit, worrying about getting older, caught up in problems from her past, desperate to stop thinking. . . Finding herself unable to write fiction, she decided to write about her affliction instead. The result is perhaps her most urgent and inventive work to date. The Shapeless Unease is a beautiful, shape-shifting book, moving seamlessly from quasi-surreal scenes in which Harvey describes the sensation of being awake for nights and days on end, to painful appointments with a GP who is running low on time, resources and sympathy, to thoughtful enquiries into the roots of her insomnia. It is a vivid, unsettling reflection of the things we all lose sleep over. Customers Review:I don’t see this as a memoir, more as a work of philosophy that emanates from a long period of suffering. This is an important book touching on aspects of the self that are painful as well as illuminating. The onset of severe insomnia tried the resilience of the author to the limit, well-meaning but unhelpful (and sometimes patronising) advice already tried to no effect. The fragmentation that plagued Harvey’s daily life is well illustrated in the structure of this book. It ranges from the search for a reason – WHY is this constant sleeplessness happening? – bringing up the saddest, most uncomforting life events; to the trigger, and a letter to the one just lost, fearlessly itemising those facts after life best not contemplated; through the anger over both personal and political irritants, to the short story that symbolically encapsulates the author’s own. Several wider, fundamental issues emerge that are thought-provoking. Kept to the last, is a lyrical section that may serve to wash away the pain. There is depth of analysis as well as beautiful writing in this book. | |
3 reviews