This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
It’s reassuring, given that I am unlikely ever to have a book nominated for any prize, let alone a Booker, to read one that is so utterly silly.
I don’t get it.
Much much self-obsessed whining such that one WOULD do if one never slept, true enough, but honestly. Booker worthy? No.
Look, I know lots of people with long time insomnia because they are in addition struggling with a serious chronic disease. Samantha Harvey is not, apparently, so my sympathies are scant.
Reviews on the back are glowing “prose so elegant, so luminous, it practically shines from the page”. Not my experience. I found it boring and flipped through the slim volume quite quickly.
I also know a lot of people who struggle with mental
Illness/anxiety/ depression, including me. I did not relate to this book whatsoever. I hope it resonates with some of you.
Sadly, no miracle for me. ( )

When I was only partway through this book, I began to wonder what psychopath had described it as "a delight" in their Observer review. I had been expecting a book about sleep and insomnia, but it was turning out to be mainly (and sometimes graphically) about death. And obsession, and childhood trauma, and therapy, and Brexit, and anxiety, and tedium, and death.

Eventually it turned out to be about life too. The book combines autobiography, documentary, descriptive writing, philosophizing, and fictional narrative, in a slightly bewildering mosaic. Its exploration of human existence - presumably the fruit of many hours of fretting in the dark - was unexpectedly both disturbing and faintly reassuring.

MB 30-08-2023 ( )

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. ( )

The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping by Samantha Harvey is an extended meditation about the anxieties of life in general that become amplified when she goes through a year of sleeplessness.

If you're seeing comments about "stream of consciousness" writing and don't really like that style, don't let those comments keep you from the book. This isn't truly stream of consciousness. Most of her writing is not internal thoughts unfiltered but rather her thoughts written to convey her feelings to a reader. This means that each small section does have form and the jumps due to associations is less off-putting than in actual stream of consciousness. Harvey does try to convey the way the mind can sabotage attempts at sleep but for the most part stops short of taking us into her unfiltered stream of consciousness.

Having clarified that misstatement from so many reviewers (one that makes a certain amount of sense, if a reader views any glimpse at internal thoughts outside of a definitive narrative as "stream of consciousness" then they will think that is what this is), I have to acknowledge that there isn't much obvious structure to the book. That, however, is a strength and not a weakness. There is a sense of a chronological flow, whether from the beginning of her sleepless year or through a sleepless night, but each meditation is also a relatively independent piece of writing. I say relatively because there are threads other than sleeplessness that run through the book.

Life is stressful and whether in the form of fear, anxiety, or a hybrid of the two that stress can amplify any other physical issue. I have always been a "bad sleeper," prone to waking and then maybe getting back to sleep eventually. In the past few years I have had bouts of sleeplessness, usually no longer than a week to three weeks. I know how much that disrupts my life and how every little, and not so little, element of life becomes something to fret over while I try to empty my mind to sleep. I can't imagine a year of that.

But the things that Harvey writes about will speak to not only other insomniacs but anyone who ever takes the time to ponder life's incongruities. Things that make little to no sense and even more perplexing those things that make perfect sense but are simply wrong or bad. I have my always ready topics that wait just below the surface, ready to expand into every corner of my mind if I have a bad sleep, or sleepless, night. I think most of us do. This book is relatable for those who know this about themselves.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )