Insomniac City

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A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls 'the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected' of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks.

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'A beautiful memoir in which Oliver Sacks comes wonderfully to life ... Exquisitely wrought, heartrending and joyous' – Joyce Carol Oates

'A loving tribute to Sacks and to New York ... Read just 50 pages, and you’ll see easily enough how Hayes is Sacks’s logical complement' – Jennifer Senior, New York Times

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Bill Hayes came to New York in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.

And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbour, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes’s distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.

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'A unique and exuberant celebration of life and love' – Kirkus Reviews