MEMOIR
THE SHAPELESS UNEASE: A YEAR OF NOT SLEEPING
by Samantha Harvey (Cape £12.99, 192 pp)
There can be few people for whom Samantha Harvey’s dazzling, dizzying trip through the nightmare world of the sleepless will be completely foreign. Who among us hasn’t lain awake at night counting backwards from one thousand?
I can sometimes be found kneeling at the foot of the bed, hands clasped in prayer, asking the Almighty for help in knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care. In return for which I will stop swearing and live better. Doesn’t seem to work though.
For the privileged sleepers, whose heads so naturally hit pillows of night-time comfort, well… lucky you. Ms Harvey is not among your number.
There can be few people for whom Samantha Harvey’s (pictured) dazzling, dizzying trip through the nightmare world of the sleepless will be completely foreign
She stopped sleeping in 2016: now comes this little gem of a book. The death of a much-loved cousin was one of the blows that sent her careering into sleeplessness; also the Brexit vote.
A passionate Remainer, she became intensely depressed and disillusioned by the result of the referendum. Lighten up, you might justifiably think.
She also moved to a house on a busy road in Somerset where the noise of the traffic and passing SUVs hitting a road bump haunt her nights.
Maybe a mistake to go there.
Her new MP turns out to be Jacob Rees-Mogg, which can’t make for a restful time for so committed an anti-Brexiter as the author.
Packed into this wondrous little book — a sort of stream of consciousness of night-time imaginings — is a treasure trove of material.
There’s a haunting account of her parents’ divorce and the death of her dog when she was young, all underpinned by a diamond-clear child’s eye view of the terrible way adults treat each other.
If you have never thought properly about the lyrics of the song Windmills Of Your Mind, and its haunting ear-worm melody, this is the book for you. Harvey’s mum sings it while she does the housework, post-divorce.
Harvey also becomes fascinated by the Amazonian tribe, the Piraha people of Brazil, who are solely concerned with the here and now.
There is no history beyond living memory, but, as Harvey says, they are a bright, alert, capable and witty people and one of the only tribes in the world to have survived without making any concession to the modern world.
They have few possessions and their experience of the present moment, she says, is seemingly absolute.
You can see why she loves them: none of that irritating, haunting messing around with time and consciousness.
She’s also brilliant on words and the nature of writing. So, obligingly, Harvey, a well-regarded novelist, gives us a gripping little book within a book: fragments of a crime story about a likeable bloke who robs ATMs — jackpotting he calls it, a good word — to get enough cash to please his disagreeable wife who just wants to acquire stuff. He leaves his wedding ring behind, and presumably his wife as well soon enough, when she finds out.
Harvey tries everything to ease her insomnia — conventional pills, herbal drugs, all the medicine chest of the insomniac. Nothing works. She starts to trash her own body.
‘I break and I get up and hit things, the wall. My head, my head against the wall. I might howl. I might scream.’
Normal medical advice isn’t going to cut it here. ‘Why don’t you spray some lavender on your pillow?’ asks her doctor. ‘Because I’m beyond lavender.’
‘It can’t hurt to try.’
‘It can’t hurt to rub myself down with dry beech leaves in the moonlight, but will it help is the question?’ It’s pretty funny as well, this book.
The Shapeless Unease is also one of the best books you will find about swimming. And its wonders.
‘Take a river, lake, ocean or other body of open water. Fresh air is key; cold is key. Get in regardless and in any attire. Get in . . .’
In the formless mass and power of the water, and the huge spaces around her, she finds a world that overwhelms the anxiety of the thinking mind.
‘This is the cure for insomnia. Everything passes, this too. One day … it will lose its footing and fall away and you’ll drop each night into sleep without knowing how you once found it impossible.’ Hurrah!
My own solution — though I am not sure it’s quite up Ms Harvey’s street — is to find some Test match in the southern hemisphere and let the soothing tones of the cricket commentators wash over me.
If I wake, all I can hear is ‘…and that’s four more to Steven Smith…’ and I know that all’s well with the world.