I'll say very little about this.
I'm a psychology student. This book NEEDS trigger warnings. I didn't have any in the info page at the beginning, the Goodreads synopsis, the NetGalley synopsis or ANYWHERE. This book WILL give people panic attacks. You can't just write whatever the fuck you want and not be responsible for it because it's a book and it's art and it can't ever be wrong. So, TRIGGER WARNINGS:
-death
-second person narration of how you'll die
-death of a loved one
-second person narration of how your corpse will rot
-anxiety, REALLY BAD, UNFILTERED, SPIRALLING-DOWN ANXIETY
-epilepsy
And that's only counting the quarter of the book I read. It's nasty as fuck, and the author tries to downplay it by making it "poetic" (and failing imo) or quirky or funny but it isn't any of those things. IT'S HIGHLY IRRESPONSIBLE TO PUT THIS KIND OF UNFILTERED STUFF OUT THERE WITHOUT ITS PROPER TRIGGER WARNINGS.

Second, there's literally medical misinformation here. YOU CAN'T SWALLOW YOUR TONGUE WHILE HAVING A SEIZURE. This thought has lead to many epileptic people BITING THEIR LITERAL TONGUES OFF. Who THE FUCK beta read this, who is her agent, who is her editor, how many people DID NOT KNOW THIS?

Third, and again, as a psychologist, there truly are some things that should stay between you and your therapist.

I have a lot more to say but don't want to waste more time on this book.

I would like to start this review by thanking NetGalley for providing me the opportunity to read this book for free, in exchange for an honest review.

The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey is about her struggle with a year of sleeplessness. The book, although I feel that it is more fitting to refer to it as a journal or diary, is written in the format of stream of consciousness. From a few reviews that I’ve read, people have mixed feelings about this style of writing but I love it--I think it really allows you to get inside the person’s brain and feel what they’re thinking and how they process their emotions. Samantha Harvey’s writing is eloquent, drawing on stories, memories, and experiences to really allow the reader to get a glimpse into her despair and anxiety surrounding her newfound inability to sleep.

I’m giving this three stars because it was a quick read and also written very well but it is not the style of book that I would pick up to read a second time, or probably even pay full price for. This is a beautiful conceptual piece but at times I also found myself getting a little lost and confused in the conceptual, wondering how it was tied to reality. This book doesn’t have a plot or chapters and I personally felt that it was best read in one sitting. I did read this in two sittings and both times I felt like it took me a while to really get absorbed back into the work--it took awhile but I enjoyed it once I was.

Finally, it was interesting to see the tie-in of Brexit and how it impacted the author. There are a few mentions of Brexit throughout the book and Harvey’s year of sleeplessness begins right around the same time. This is a good piece that points out how global events also impact people’s anxieties and routines--especially people already struggling with anxiety or depressive disorders. I can’t imagine a year without sleep but this book enabled me to have a new level of empathy for people that struggle with insomnia and sleep disturbances.

I am an insomniac and this book instantly appealed to me. I started it one night during a bout of insomnia and couldn't help but draw the parallels between the insomnia in the book over Brexit and my own over COVID. Worry certainly causes all kinds of havoc in someone's life.

The writing style is stream of consciousness which is an interesting choice when the author wants nothing more than to lose consciousness and sleep. I usually enjoy this writing style but it became a bit much as you felt the desperation, anxiety, and deep need for sleep after the author battling insomnia for a year.

In the end there was a bit of resolution and there were definitely some interesting facts along the way. If you enjoyed "My Year of Rest and Relaxation", this book is essentially the opposite and nearly as fascinating. However, this book is not for everyone - especially if you already deal with insomnia.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley for this book in exchange for a review.

Since I have a lot of sleeping trouble, I thought I would relate to this. This book was not really much about sleeping problems as much as stream of conscious rambling. Some of it was interesting at first then I got over it. This should have been an essay or a short story. To drag it on so long was just unnecessary.

I have never read anything by Samantha Harvey before, I but I was fascinated by the thought of a person who didn't sleep for a year. (Kind of a spoiler: She did get some sleep, just not much.) Here is what I learned:
1. I really like Samantha Harvey's writing style, and I would like to read more of her work.
2. Even though sleep is pretty important, you can apparently still function (although to a lesser degree) without it. I don't know that I could function, but Samantha still did.

I really liked how she connected the stories of her life to her sleeping problems. These parts were written beautifully. However, I wasn't as fond of the story-within-the-story that she was writing. I would have preferred to read more about her.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you to the author, Grove Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

While parts of this were relatable, and all of it was beautifully written, I found it very hard to read due to the stream of consciousness style, and the fractured, disjointed result. Yes, it mirrors the author's state and outlook on life, suffering from debilitating insomnia - but I wouldn't have chosen to read this voluntarily, had I been aware of the form chosen.

This is a writer's very personal account of sleeplessness and the thoughts that fill the space the absence of sleep creates. Despite some of the triggers about death and anxiety I thought this book was a true genius of creativity in that it's aim is to be everything but creative. This is a journal of sorts, a window into an insomniac's quest for forty winks or even just five.

I received this from Netgalley.com for a review.

Samantha Harvey has tried everything just to get some sleep: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements.

This book seems like a very cathartic way for the author to cope with insomnia. I hope she is now getting some restful sleep. I found the writing a bit disjointed and hard to follow.

2.25☆

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 be lovely for well-rested readers, but I threw in the towel. It caused me to be unconscious. I tried more than once, but had to give up. DNF.

I loved the title and I was pretty curious to read this book, unfortunately the reading wasn't able to capture my attention, it wasn't an easy read.

chaotic and brooding exactly like what insomnia feels expressed in a series of vignettes which are as diverse yet as single minded as insomnia itself feels

". . . 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 all-encompassing 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 another. In many ways Harvey's writing mirrors her condition throughout the book: slightly stream-of-consciousness, 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 spur-of-the-moment. 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 meaning—that 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 22.

Thanks to Grove Press for providing me an e-ARC of this via NetGalley!

When I first stumbled upon The Shapeless Unease among upcoming releases, I thought it sounded a bit like Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation – which I along with most everyone I know loved. But while both books tackle sleep-problems and span a year, their resemblance ends there – Samantha Harvey’s 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 it’s always there, forming everything within the life it’s holding in its grip.

The Shapeless Unease is a memoir told in a stream-of-conciousness 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 surface-level 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. Harvey’s 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; it’s short snappy phrases and over-written 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 she’s 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 there’s a difference between appreciation for worth and reading enjoyment, in this case it doesn’t work beyond its idea.

On the other hand, when Harvey’s is at the top of her game she appears to reach beyond the veil – there’s 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 there’s no stopping it. It’s 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 doesn’t necessarily have the answers, but it’s a notion I can’t 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, we’re 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”.

As an occasional insomniac, I have felt the whirlpool of anxiety that Samantha Harvey describes so well in her sleeplessness memoir THE SHAPELESS UNEASE. It's a story that's very much of the moment, in a time when Twitter feeds and political insanity only yield one more thing to lose sleep about. One night of wakefulness is one thing, but several nights of it often lead to several more. In breathless prose, Harvey recounts her time alone in the darkness with nothing but her thoughts of mortality, politics, the past, the present, the future, and countless other topics, that give way to frustrating, ineffective maddening days. The torment never ends. The usual comforts – lavender essential oils, proper sleep hygiene, sedatives, meditation – never seem to do the trick…until they do. But the question is always how long it will be, until, once again, one experiences “the shapeless unease of life without sleep, where days merge unbounded.” Harvey is a relatable, reliable narrator, and her story will likely appeal to those of us who’ve tossed and turned for whatever reason, hoping sweet slumber will eventually come.

Insomnia can be a paralyzing medical condition, the sufferer soon buried under a crushing sleep debt and creatively crippled. Samantha Harvey, however, uses it as the catalyst for a harrowing collection of stream of consciousness essays, loosely revolving around her lack of sleep.

The book's strength comes from the moments where Harvey leaves her emotional state the most exposed, such as when she's describing a Friday morning doctor visit and tearfully trying to explain that she hasn't slept since the previous Sunday, or the relatable moments of looking at the clock repeatedly in the early hours of the morning and seeing various times go by that many aren't awake to see. Conversely, Harvey throws in various sections of what appears to be fiction in between these chapters (an ATM burglary), which interrupts the narrative's flow and didn't seem to come to anything in the end. Harvey is normally a writer of fiction, and I can only wonder if these sections were meant to make a point about how insomnia has interrupted her normal creative style.

The Shapeless Unease is a good, if uneven, window into what insomnia can do to the mind.

**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Grove Atlantic**

After experiencing a series of personal tragedies and the shock of the Brexit vote, British novelist, Samantha Harvey, found herself unable to sleep for more than two or three hours a day. Most of us have experienced similar bouts of insomnia during periods of stress, but Harvey’s sleeplessness continued for over a year; almost destroying her sanity.
Her struggle with insomnia is recounted in The Shapeless Unease : A Year of Not Sleeping. More than anything else, this book is an indictment of the National Health Service, as doctor after doctor fails to appreciate the desperate condition the author finds herself in. More than one physician tells her to wait it out and her insomnia will pass even as her life begins falling apart.
Drugs, hypnosis, yoga, meditation, changes in diet and travel all fail to give anything but temporary relief, while even those closest to her do not appear to appreciate the seriousness of what Harvey is experiencing. She heroically continues with her writing and daily life despite continually exhaustion and occasional hallucinations brought about by her lack of rest,
Rather than telling her story in a straightforward manner, The Shapeless Unease adopts a Joycean, stream-of-consciousness approach. There are long, punctuated sentences and sudden changes in time frame and viewpoint.
Incorporated within her memoir is a short story about two bank robbers, she wrote during this period of sleeplessness. But this story, like the rest of the book, is broken up into fragments and scattered throughout the text.
This unconventional approach to a memoir may put some readers off, but The Shapeless Unease is worth sticking with for its insights into the creative process, the importance of rest and the limitations of health professionals.

Maybe I just picked this up at the wrong time because I'm usually okay with abstract or obscure writing... I found this just a little too incoherent for me at the mo.

I was interested in this book because until relatively recently, I've had trouble sleeping. It's part of how I read so many books--I can't sleep!

This was sort of a stream of consciousness so if that is not your bag, you might want to pass. I feel like it worked for the subject matter--what is sleep and dreaming but a stream of consciousness activity? It really meanders between topics--childhood, worries, death but the writing is solid.

Sprawling meditations on insomnia, struggle, language, Great Britain, kinship, faith, reason, writing, a bank robbery, ineffable dreams.

“The Shapeless Unease” is a stream of consciousness mosaic of diary-entry-style notes, author’s experiences, memories and fragments of fiction in formation through which the author tries to explore and, perhaps, tackle her sudden insomnia. She talks about her childhood dog, her cousin and his death, her visits to the doctor... there is a lot of vulnerability exposed. There are also quite a few poignant and relatable moments, the flow of the book is leisurely and nice, though directionless. I stayed along for the ride because of the writing, which is beautiful. I have never read Samantha Harvey’s fiction, but you know a skilled writer when you see one.
There isn’t really anything to learn from the book and little to shake the reader, but it is still touching and pleasant. You flip the last page feeling good about the author, where she will go, and considering how intimate the whole book and the tone are, it seems Harvey feels so herself.

A nice little book to pick up on a whim or as palliative reading for those battling the horror of insomnia.