An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick’s finest fiction. Nevertheless, there's no denying the poetic style and her ability to capture a mood and people from her life in ways that seem to belie the suggestion that this is some fictional recreation. In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her lifethe parade of people, the shifting background of placeand assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. First published in 1979, Sleepless Nights is a unique collage of. united by the high intelligence and beauty of Hardwick's prose.'Rediscover a lost American classic: Sleepless Nights, a kaleidoscopic scrapbook of one woman's memories, here reissued with a new introduction by Eimear McBride.I am alone here in New York, no longer a we. This is clearly a literary work, for people who are very well read - many of the allusions were lost on me, which I found a touch frustrating. Sally Rooney: 'A series of fleeting images and memories. The lack of apparent structure, the flitting between one topic and another is a reflection of the writer's meandering mind, but also a reflection of the energetic chaos of the city where the book is largely based. There are also some incredibly detailed characters here, especially Billie Holiday, which is the highlight of the book. There are metafictional touches here, where she makes it clear she's generating a semi-fictional world out of reality. What's clear by the end, though, is that, despite the passive voice, she is deeply touched, often wounded, by the many relationships she has, but tries hard to suppress these feelings. Many of her interactions are with men, where she appears more like prey than an equal, and woman-as-victim is a running them in this book, as if this is simply how things are. She was the author of three novels: The Ghostly Lover (1945), The Simple Truth (1955), and Sleepless Nights (1979). She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. Hardwick graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. In the main, she talks in a passive voice, as if some anthropologist discovering the hidden, strange, vivid characters around her. Elizabeth Hardwick was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer. ![]() In this semi auto-biographical memoir, Hardwick recounts the varied people she met in her life, largely in New York. Sleepless Nights Elizabeth Hardwick, Geoffrey OBrien 3.68 3,175ratings460reviews Want to read Kindle 9.99 Rate this book In Sleepless Nights FictionShort StoriesNovelsLiterary FictionAmericanClassicsLiterature.
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