A memoir of sleeplessness posits making peace with our ruptured nights – but risks becoming an exhausting read

A Memoir of Sleeplessness Posits Making Peace with Our Ruptured Nights – But Risks Becoming an Exhausting Read

Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia

For me, the journey towards sleep is a precarious one, relying on a shifting portfolio of mental states, and an irritating need for silence. The sound of my partner breathing or a hoon tearing down the road at the top of our driveway can shatter my rest, leaving me with sharp, little pieces of sleep jabbing at me with the promise of a difficult day ahead.

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When Did This Start?

When did sleep become so elusive? I became sensitive to noise in London, where I was a music journalist in the 1990s, but even I needed to sleep sometimes, and this could be hard with paper-thin walls and drunken neighbors. But did the trouble start even earlier, in adolescence or childhood, I wonder, remembering the volatility in my first home? Did I ever sleep like a baby, even when I was one?

Marie Darrieussecq’s Quest

French writer Marie Darrieussecq embarks on a similar investigation into her own struggle with sleep in her new book, Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia. Through a hybrid of personal narrative and meditative essays, Darrieussecq contemplates the curse of insomnia with unusual scope. But while she writes like a dream, her work is thrown out of joint by its ambitious scale. Her exhaustive project risks becoming an exhausting read.

The Hunt for Sleep

The hunt for sleep has become a global industry. Psychologists, doctors, yoga teachers, meditation and breath-work practitioners ply us with sleep apps, mindfulness routines, prescription drugs, and natural remedies. Columns and articles clog up the media with tips on How To Sleep, recycling age-old advice in jazzed-up terminology. At least we have something to occupy us in the small hours.

Personal Encounters

Perhaps my own struggles with sleep are why no matter how much I appreciate the scholarship of Darrieussecq’s impressive project, I’m most interested in her personal quest. Her desperate encounters with pharmacology, alcohol, and eventually a somnologist (sleep psychiatrist) are the ones that resonate. The love and torture of childbirth and breastfeeding, the problem of the study-bedroom, the relentlessness of the 4:04 a.m. waking hour, all have me bristling with recognition and relief.

Eluding the Page

Dancing on and off the page, appearing, disappearing, and re-emerging throughout her book, Darrieussecq spins a heady web. Intoxicating and disorientating, her style works perfectly when she writes about the spiraling anxiety of insomnia, and the dizzy voids of sleeplessness. It lets her capture the internal cacophony, the sense of isolation, and the tide of dread that destabilizes those of us who battle for sleep.

Insomnia vs. Creativity

On finishing Darrieussecq’s book, I return to the beginning, to where she writes of the hunt for the killer of sleep, and states a brutal truth: "Nothing prevents the insomniac from not sleeping." There is a mythological quality to these words that bears little relationship to the more familiar grind and drudgery of not sleeping. But Sleepless is an attempt to coax something meaningful from long, empty, wide-awake nights.

Conclusion

Darrieussecq’s book is a beautiful move, and typical of the psychoanalytic mind, which enjoys finding new angles on questions far more than contriving neat answers. So while I don’t feel I’ve got a better grasp on who my narrator is, when I finish her book, I am refreshed. I have a different way of relating to the night.

FAQs

• What is the book "Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia" about?
  • The book is a memoir by French writer Marie Darrieussecq about her own struggle with insomnia and her quest to understand the curse of sleeplessness.
• What are some of the themes explored in the book?
  • The book explores themes of insomnia, creativity, and the relationship between sleep and the self.
• How does the author approach the topic of insomnia?
  • Darrieussecq approaches the topic of insomnia through a combination of personal narrative, meditative essays, and intellectual inquiry.
• Is the book easy to read?
  • The book can be challenging to read due to its complex style and ambitious scope.