The Shapeless Unease
A Year of Not Sleeping

Thoughts on a reread: Still holds up. Still an immensely thought provoking, moving and gorgeous book. - Where do I even begin with The Shapeless Unease. It’s an amalgamation of personal memoir, essays, snippets of fiction that have been birthed from the author’s period of extreme sleep deprivation. On......more

". . . my friend looks at me with infinite compassion and says, une petite nuit? Oui, I say, une petite nuit, encore. In this expression, French has it all wrong; nights awake are the longest, largest, most cavernous of things. There is acre upon acre of night, and whole eras come and go, and there......more

I was so hoping to relate to this one, having myself suffered for years from insomnia due to a condition that is now (CSA) Central Sleep Apnea. This author's year of insomnia led her to express it in this book, but I must be too sleep deprived to get into her stream of consciousness delivery. It may......more

In a word, not my cup of tea. Depressing and failed to engage. While I'm sure it appeals to some, I decided against going further, aka DNF.......more

I've now read all of Harvey's work, including her latest Orbital and while I did enjoy the writing in this (and the way she read it), it felt rather too disjointed for me. Lots of thoughts about what she does when she can't sleep, her interactions with doctors, but also a short story that she's writ......more