Experience The Shapeless Unease: A Year Of Not Sleeping Presented By Samantha Harvey Available In Readable Copy

this year, I wrote about Marina Benjamins Insomnia, a luminous meditation on the hinterland between longedfor sleep and unwelcome wakefulness, Samantha Harveys The Shapeless Unease could be viewed as something of a companion piece to the Benjamin, Its just as beautifully written, a book that brilliantly evokes the fragmentary nature of this condition, perfectly capturing the freewheeling association between seemingly disparate thoughts as the mind flits from one topic to another.


In the midst of the night, Harvey trawls through the remnants of her past, searching for clues on the cause of her insomnia, the trigger that has turned her from a sleeper to a nonsleeper over the past year.


When I dont sleep I spend the night searching the intricacies of my past, trying to find out where I went wrong, trawling through childhood to see if the genesis of the insomnia is there, trying to find the exact thought, thing or happening that turned me from a sleeper to a nonsleeper.
I try to find a key to release me from it, I try to solve the logic problem that is now my life, I circle the arena of my mind, its shrinking perimeter, like a polar bear in its grubby bluewhite plastic enclosure with fake ice caps and water that turns out to have no depth.
I circle and circle. Itsa. m. ,a. m. Its alwaysa. m. ,a. m. I circle back. p.

So much of what Harvey says in this book resonates with me from the differences between fear and anxiety, to her reflections on death and our own sense of mortality, to the humiliation we sometimes encounter when discussing a condition with a doctor or counsellor.
I too have experienced that sense of dread and desperation when seeking a cause or label for a series of symptoms, the need to negotiate for further tests or investigations to be carried out.
Moreover, the frustration of being on the receiving end of wellintentioned advice and lifestyle interventions, most of which have already been explored,

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When I first stumbled upon The Shapeless Unease among upcoming releases, I thought it sounded a bit like Moshfeghs My Year of Rest and Relaxation which I along with most everyone I know loved.
But while both books tackle sleepproblems and span a year, their resemblance ends there Samantha Harveys The Shapeless Unease is a memoir of one year where she struggles with sleep and through this experience, she writes not about sleep so much as everything else.
As she puts it herself at one point, sleep like money is something that you only really think about when you have too little of it, Sleep then, to the insomniac, becomes the prism through which you see and move in the world that is a pretty accurate representation of the book as well, sleep becomes the prism through which Harvey experiences, thinks, feels and narrates her life.
It is rarely the subject of discussion but at the same time its always there, forming everything within the life its holding in its grip,

The Shapeless Unease is a memoir told in a streamofconciousness style, a literary style which for me has turned out to be kind of a marmite thing.
Usually, I find it ends up allowing for too much fragmentation in writing rather than staying with one thing, dedicating time and effort to dig deeper into it the writer is allowed to flick from point to point without bothering to get beyond the most surfacelevel notes.
On the other hand, it can at times bring out an authenticity of the truest sensory experience without the cloak of narrative rules, sense of propriety or time.
Speaking from the heart, I suppose is the cheesy way of putting it, Harveys book is a mixture of both the good and the bad with the form,

When her writing is at its weakest is when her words almost seem hollow its short snappy phrases and overwritten sentences that seem to weigh nothing else but conveying to the reader the emotional state of its creator.
It does serve a purpose in reflecting the mind of an insomniac, the way her mind is in fact fragmented because she has not the energy or the sense of presence to keep hold of longer strains of thought or form true order of what shes narrating.
It all ends up being mushy, with deprived thoughts hardly worth printing, As a reader, I felt I could appreciate the technical value in the writing form and what it does to the book how it tells a story beyond the actual wording, how the shape of the book reflects the story the shapelessness it is holding in its covers.
But theres a difference between appreciation for worth and reading enjoyment, in this case it doesnt work beyond its idea,

On the other hand, when Harveys is at the top of her game she appears to reach beyond the veil theres honesty and something akin to a vision, of seeing all the way to the core of things, stripping away the layers of accepted narrative and clichés, commonly accepted truths and comfortable thinking patterns to reveal something recognisably true.
She manages to do this with topics as varied as world politics, identity, death, relationships, writing, sleep, and philosophy, I found myself stopping at the way she writes about anxiety and fear, especially she writes about the way anxiety, like sleeplessness, reproduces itself in an endless cycle and how worrying about worrying will only worsen the experience but theres no stopping it.
Its a helpless feeling that she equals to that of her sleeplessness, “the more you want it the less it comes”,

Ultimately, she closes the book with questioning her own sense in the world and why she keeps on moving forward, even in the midst of this political and worldly turmoil how do any of us keep on even when it feels like the sky is falling Even when it seems everything is going to shit “What is it that is leaning forward in me now, towards the world” She doesnt necessarily have the answers, but its a notion I cant help but think we could all do with, in this current state of the world.
Generations before us have struggled, have faced prejudice and hatred and wars and suffering and discrimination and injustice and many struggles beside, were not alone in this experience and yet it is our experience now.
How do we face it Why do we keep on leaning in, towards the world, each other, ourselves It seems a good thing to return to in times of trouble of the external or internal kind.
To be reminded of that something which does, against the odds, lean forward towards the world and propels us to “swim with, with with”, " 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 isn't another soul to be found on the journey through to morning, "

The Shapeless Unease is, as its subtitle puts it, about its author's year of not sleeping, But to say that this book is about insomnia is to miss the soil that that insomnia grows in: the anxiety, the existential panic, the sheer exhaustion with life.
This is what Harvey writes about: insomnia as an allencompassing thing, an ouroboros eating its tail, sleeplessness breeding anxiety, anxiety pushing a full night's sleep further out of reach.


Harvey's book is more than anything, I think, a series of meditations on her insomnia, anxiety, and existential panic, It has no structure as such, but is moreso fluid in its movement from one subject to the other, In many ways Harvey's writing mirrors her condition throughout the book: slightly streamofconsciousness, introspective, sometimes painfully aware of her physical being and sometimes transposing herself onto vivid snippets of memory.
Because the book so inextricably follows her states of being and trains of thought, it reads as particularly organic in its layout, lending its writing a distinct feeling of being unfiltered and spurofthemoment.
And this is not even to mention the absolute beauty of Harvey's writing, "Beauty" almost feels like the wrong word to use here, given the searing intimacy of Harvey's account, but her writing really is just exquisite, It's the kind of writing style that enhances rather than buries meaningthat is, it's not superficial or flowery for the sake of being flowery, but actually gives you a more intimate sense of Harvey's experiences.


The Shapeless Unease is a book that has some of the most beautiful, painfully honest writing I've read in a while, I think everyone will find something in this book that will speak to them in some measure, Highly recommend giving it a chance when it comes out on May,

Thanks to Grove Press for providing me an eARC of this via NetGalley! An absolute triumph, Harvey puts into words so perfectly the intimate terror of anxiety that feels impossible to articulate, I've already put a reminder in my diary to reread this in a year's time, but I doubt I'll need it, Pretty sure I'm the only reader here on GR at least of Harvey's book who has managed to ironically doze off into a rather deep slumber if I must say so while reading it and/but finished it later anyway, and just to clarify fully conscious.
Definitely not modernday 'Virginia Woolf' as 'Telegraph' had simply described this to be, I can loosely relate to some of the things that Harvey had explored in her novel as someone who has a very complicated relationship with sleep and/but esp.
in/which inevitably makes it quite an easy novel/memoir to 'enjoy', but a lot of it was written quite carelessly and not as precisely as I would have liked hence the reduction of 'stars'.
Bit conflicted about Harvey's writing/narrative style particularly where she had written about/referred to herself in third person, I 'get' why she had done it, but she certainly could have done it better without it,

Also, I do consider myself a sometimes overly 'sensitive' person, but apparently not when it comes to writing/literature, Other readers/reviewers had complained about how Harvey had written too freely about a lot of triggering events in the book without any 'trigger warning', but I simply was not fazed by any of it.
I did, after all, completely blacked out into a very deep sleep while I was reading it, RTC. DNF at. This is not what I was expecting when I requested the book, I was thinking it would be a more straightforward memoir, I should have been clued in by the term "immersive interior monologue" in the blurb, The book is written in a stream of consciousness style, At times it was too abstract and felt way over my head, I have an anxiety disorder and this writing style, combined with the author's obsession with her cousin's death made me very distressed while reading, I suppose that's a sign of great writing, but it didn't work for me, I appreciate the exploration of what happens to one's mind when she can't sleep, but I don't like this one, many thanks to NetGalley for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest review, An introspective, streamofconscious memoir about the authors yearlong struggle with insomnia, Harveys fragmented prose mimics the wandering of the sleepless mind perfectly,

Profound and deeply insightful not at all soporific! Not sure what to make of this book, It had a lot of detailed imagery, some gorgeous, some really really awful, The meandering style made me think this book was supposed to be existential musings fuelled by grief, anxiety, guilt and resultant sleeplessness, For me, because it didn't seem to have a real intent or message it seemed like a series of indulgent, not really deep self reflections more than anything else.
A lyrical, swirling, furious attempt to pin down sleeplessness, Anyone who has ever suffered from insomnia will feel seen to the nth degree, with new, nicely arranged words to point at that describe the spiral that is insomnia.
Funny enough, I started the book atam on a sleepness night and read about a third of the book all in one quiet hour on the living room couch.
I put the book down, feeling recognized and peaceful enough with my struggle to give the whole sleeping thing another go, When I resumed the book the next day, I was disappointed to find that the book was much more scattered and "shapeless" in the light of day, I think Harvey loses some of her narrative strength with the middle third of the book, which is why I can't give it a full five, Her story about the ATM thief was a strange addition, but maybe I'm not smart enough to understand its purpose within the text, Either way, I recommend the book to my fellow insomniacs for the first third alone, There's something very powerful about knowing you're not alone, and that eventually, though it feels like you never might, you will sleep again,

ARC courtesy of NetGalley,