The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping
May 2020 · Grove Press
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About this ebook
The Booker Prize–winning author of Orbital delivers a "raw and unsettling account of 12 months of inexplicable insomnia" ( The Sunday Times, UK).
In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements. Nothing seemed to help.
The Shapeless Unease is Harvey's darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and the will to survive, from "this generation's Virginia Woolf" ( Telegraph).
"Captures the essence of fractious emotions—anxiety, fear, grief, rage—in prose so elegant, so luminous, it practically shines from the page. Harvey is a hugely talented writer, and this is a book to relish." —Sarah Waters, New York Times–bestselling author
"Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about—well, about everything: grief, pain, memory, family, the night sky, a lake at sunset, what it means to dream and what it means to suffer and survive . . . The big surprise is that this book about 'shapeless unease' is, in the end, a glittering, playful and, yes, joyful celebration of that glorious gift of glorious life." — Daily Mail
"What a spectacularly good book. It is so controlled and yet so wild . . . easily one of the truest and best books I've read about what it's like to be alive now, in this country." —Max Porter, award-winning author of Lanny
In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements. Nothing seemed to help.
The Shapeless Unease is Harvey's darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and the will to survive, from "this generation's Virginia Woolf" ( Telegraph).
"Captures the essence of fractious emotions—anxiety, fear, grief, rage—in prose so elegant, so luminous, it practically shines from the page. Harvey is a hugely talented writer, and this is a book to relish." —Sarah Waters, New York Times–bestselling author
"Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about—well, about everything: grief, pain, memory, family, the night sky, a lake at sunset, what it means to dream and what it means to suffer and survive . . . The big surprise is that this book about 'shapeless unease' is, in the end, a glittering, playful and, yes, joyful celebration of that glorious gift of glorious life." — Daily Mail
"What a spectacularly good book. It is so controlled and yet so wild . . . easily one of the truest and best books I've read about what it's like to be alive now, in this country." —Max Porter, award-winning author of Lanny
The Booker Prize–winning author of Orbital delivers a "raw and unsettling account of 12 months of inexplicable insomnia" ( The Sunday Times, UK).
In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to chan...
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About the author
Samantha Harvey is the author of The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief, and The Western Wind. Her work has been longlisted for the Bailey's Prize and the Man Booker, and finalist for the James Tait Black Award, the Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness won the Betty Trask Award in 2009. She teaches Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Samantha Harvey is the author of The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief, and The Western Wind. Her work has been longlisted for the Bailey's Prize and the Man Booker, and finalist for the James Tait Black Award, the Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wild...
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