The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping

by Samantha Harvey

Samantha Harvey (Narrator)

Brought to you by Penguin.

Sleep. Sleep. Like money, you only think about it when you have too little. Then you think about it all the time, and the less you have the more you think about it. It becomes the prism through which you see the world and nothing can exist except in relation to it.

Samantha Harvey’s insomnia arrived, seemingly, from nowhere; for a year she has spent her nights chasing sleep that rarely comes. She’s tried everything to appease it. Nothing is helping.

What happens when one of the basic human needs goes unmet? For Samantha Harvey, extreme sleep deprivation resulted in a raw clarity about life itself. Original and profound, The Shapeless Unease is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and grief, and the will to survive.

© Samantha Harvey 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

• ISBN10: 1473579147
• ISBN13: 9781473579149
• Publish Date: 9 January 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Vintage Digital
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: Audiobook (WAV)
• Duration: 4 hours and 33 minutes
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Shapeless Unease is a stream-of-consciousness retrospective on a year of sleeplessness by Samantha Harvey. Released 22nd May 2020 by Grove Atlantic, it's 192 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

If this had just been a flat personal recollection of a year of insomnia (with recipes and a subchapter on how to increase melatonin), it wouldn't have affected me nearly so much. The book's pace is irregular and moves with a jerky rhythm which is edgy and anxious. The author writes with devastating simpicity about the sudden loss of a family member (a cousin with epilepsy) and her subsequent difficulty with anxiety, loss of sleep, emotional changes, and the devastating far-reaching effects of sleep deprivation on her life.

The writing is poetic, sharp, philosophical, insightful, and sometimes terrifying. It affected me deeply, so much that I am seeing out her other work. Possibly worth noting for American readers, the writing uses British spelling and vernacular. It didn't distract me, and certainly shouldn't prove cumbersome for the majority of readers. She's such a very gifted author and worth seeking out. Her writing is sublime.

Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.