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Sleepless Nights

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( 4,168 ratings, 628 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick blends fiction and autobiography, unfolding through the reflections and memories of an introspective narrator. The story travels through various cities, exploring themes of love, loss, and identity. It weaves a tapestry of vivid landscapes and compelling characters, offering a beautiful exploration of memory and the passage of time.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you're captivated by introspective narratives and beautifully crafted prose. Elizabeth Hardwick offers a blend of fiction and memoir, presenting a mosaic of impressions, conversations, and reflections that span a lifetime. Ideal for readers who appreciate deep character insights and the exploration of personal and existential themes.

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Rediscover a lost American classic: Sleepless Nights, a kaleidoscopic scrapbook of one woman's memories, here reissued with a new introduction by Eimear McBride.

Rediscover a lost American classic: Sleepless Nights, a kaleidoscopic scrapbook of one woman's memories, here reissued with a new introduction by Eimear McBride.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

A series of fleeting images and memories ... united by the high intelligence and beauty of Hardwick's prose. - Sally Rooney

I am alone here in New York, no longer a we ...

First published in 1979, Sleepless Nights is a unique collage of fiction and memoir, letters and essays, portraits and dreams. It is more than the story of a life: it is Elizabeth Hardwick's experience of womanhood in the twentieth century. Escaping her childhood home of Kentucky, the narrator arrives at a bohemian hotel in Manhattan filled with 'drunks, actors, gamblers ... love and alcohol and clothes on the floor.'

Here begin the erotic affairs and dinner parties, the abortions and heartbreaks, the friendships and 'people I have buried'. Here are luminous sketches of characters she has met that illuminate the era's racism, sexism, and poverty. Above all, here is prose blurring into poetry, language to lose - and perhaps to find - yourself in.

Society tries to write these lives before they are lived. It does not always succeed.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick is praised for its innovative narrative style, blending memoir, fiction, and essay. Reviewers appreciate its poetic language and intimate exploration of a woman's reflections on her life, love, and identity. It's often described as a timeless, thought-provoking read that challenges conventional storytelling.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780571346998

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 04 July 2019

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Faber & Faber

Edition: Main

Contributors:

  • Introduction by Eimear McBride

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 12.0mm

Width: 131.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 135g

Pages: 144

About the Author

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and educated at the University of Kentucky and Columbia University. She was one of the great critics and intellectuals of her time. As co-founder of The New York Review of Books, she contributed more than a hundred pieces to the magazine, as well as writing fiction for the Partisan Review and New Yorker. She authored three novels, a biography of Herman Melville, and four collections of essays, and was the recipient of a Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Lifetime Achievement Citation from the National Book Critics Circle. Hardwick was married to the poet Robert Lowell from 1949 to 1972 and their collected correspondence, The Dolphin Letters, will be published in 2019.

Eimear McBride is the author of two novels: The Lesser Bohemians (James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, and others). She was the inaugural creative fellow at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading and occasionally writes for the Guardian, TLS, New Statesman and the Irish Times.

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